Curse of the Wolf Boy
by William Easley
Summary: Throw money at him-and he just might bite you! An old frenemy needs help in Gravity Falls-if there is any help for a creature of the night.
1. Chapter 1

**Curse of the Wolf Boy**

 **(May 2015)**

* * *

 **1: Throw Money and He Dances**

With his broken leg mostly healed, Manly Dan Corduroy had left his crutch behind and had graduated to a cane, and though he still wore a special brace-boot on his injured leg, he was getting around well. He stopped in at the Shack on a Saturday morning in early May—Wendy was still living there, since Junior wouldn't go back north to Steve's logging camp until his dad was able to take on all the heavy work himself—and at first, she thought he'd just come to see her.

"Nah, baby girl," Dan rumbled. "Stanford and Stanley got an appointment with me today. We're gonna go over the blueprints for their houses that I'm gonna build down the hill. We got the lots cleared and the driveways 'dozed out, the foundations Danny poured last month are 'bout ready, and now we're gonna start framin' in."

"Oh," Wendy said. "They didn't tell me. OK, well, I gotta handle the gift shop this morning. We're expecting five tour buses before noon, along with the usual car traffic."

"Can I just set here and watch you?" Dan asked.

Wendy laughed. "Sure, Dad. Haul a chair in from the parlor and park it here against the wall beside the counter. I warn you, though, there's not much to see."

However, Dan seemed enthralled as Wendy went about straightening the items on the shelves, changing out a couple of damaged tchotchkes, and stocking the register. "When do the customers come?" he asked her.

"We open in twenty minutes."

Someone tapped on the door and Wendy said, "'Scuse me, somebody showed up early." But then she glanced through the glass panes on the door and did a double take before unlocking and opening the door. " _Gideon_?" she asked in an unbelieving voice.

"Hi, Wendy," Gideon Gleeful said. "Here for my first weekly shift of the tourist season as th' Wolf Boy. My, my, if I may say so you are looking good!"

"Come on in, dude," Wendy said. "Uh, I think you've met my Dad."

Gideon, who held his costume in a garment bag slung over his shoulder, said, "Why, to be sure! How are you, Mr. Corduroy? I hope you're recovering from your untimely accident."

"Uh, yeah, doin' good, doin' good. Uh, thanks," Dan said.

"Well, I have to get into my costume and make-up. Is my dressing room free, Wendy?"

"You mean the upstairs bathroom? Sure, dude, knock yourself out."

He went up the stairs, whistling to himself, and Dan said in what for him was a whisper, "Who the hell was that guy?"

"Gideon Gleeful," Wendy told him. "'Cept I haven't seen anything of him all winter. He's changed a whole lot!"

And he had. At thirteen, he'd shot up several inches. He must have been watching what he ate, too, because he had trimmed down—or shaped up, anyway, and maybe he had just grown into his weight. He was no longer a butterball, but a solid-looking young teen. And the poofy bouffant hairdo was gone—now his pale blond hair was still full, but he'd gathered it at the back into a ponytail. Most amazing of all, he no longer wore his bolo tie and pale blue Western-style suit.

He was actually in jeans and a black tee shirt, worn under a denim jacket. Had Wendy been fourteen rather than nearly eighteen, she would have admitted that he looked kind of _hot_!

Dan frowned. "Gideon Gleeful? That little frou-frou haired ball of turkey fat? That's really him?"

Wendy shrugged. "Yeah, it's him. I guess maybe he's got, like, a girl friend or something. He's toned up a lot since last fall!"

" _Boy_ friend would be my guess," Dan rumbled. "Uh—not that I'm sayin', you know."

"Don't stereotype, Dad," Wendy told him with a smile.

Soos, in full Mr. Mystery regalia, came in, cheerfully greeted Dan, with whom he'd worked on several carpentry projects, mainly involving the Shack, and asked Wendy if they were ready to open.

"As we'll ever be," Wendy said. "Hooray, hooray, the first of May, tourists start to go nuts today!"

"It's the _second_ of May, dawg," Soos told her gently. "But, yeah, they'll be pourin' in any minute now. Hark! I hear footsteps on the porch!" He threw open the door and said, "Welcome to the Mystery Shack, the shackiest mystery place in Central Ore—oh, hi, Mr. Pines and Dr. Pines. I thought you were, like, tourists or some deal."

"The place ready for business?" Stan asked, stepping past Soos and glaring all around. But then he smiled. "Oh, hey, Dan! Saw your truck out front. Sorry we're a little bit late."

"That's OK," Dan said, getting out of the chair. "Yeah, that's the four-wheel drive. Want to ride down to the site with me and we'll inspect the foundations, make plans for the framing?" He reached for his cane.

"That will be acceptable," Ford said. "It's not an ideal day—a little misty—but from the foundations, we can get a good idea of the placement of the houses."

"Why," said a voice from the doorway, "hello, Stanford! And Stanley! You're both looking well."

"Holy moly!" Stan said, blinking, his jaw dropping. " _Gideon_? What the fuzz happened to you? You're all buffed up!"

Wendy also gawped in surprise. Gideon's Wolf Boy costume was more elaborate and professional than the dog-hair leggings that Stan had forced Dipper to wear. His were more like chaps, the faux fur a match for his own hair. They rode low on him, but now with his flatter stomach he carried that off better. He wore a sort of modified, matching bolo jacket to make his arms look furry, he'd applied dark press-on nails to serve as claws, and he had—Wendy squinted—yes, he'd glued on a chest-hair wig. "Thank you," he told Stan. "Ghost Eyes convinced me I should be livin' a healthier life-style, so I've been doin' some weights and a little bit of road work and I'm layin' off the sweets!" He raised his chin. "Lookie here. I got an actual neck now!"

"Dude," Soos said, "that's a revealing costume! I mean, OK, I got no room to talk, I was Questiony the Question Mark, but you look like a chipper-shredder dancer or some junk!"

Gideon winked. "All the better to get big tips from the ladies! Whoo-ee! OK, I'll pull the curtain and I'll be ready on stage when you get a bunch in. Oh, and Soos? I brought some new music. Here." He handed Soos a USB stick. "Six songs, six slightly different routines. First one is 'The Big Bad Wolf,' for the kiddies, and then 'Hungry Like the Wolf' for the older ladies, and then there's a number by Rise Against, and I'm afraid it has some naughty words, but this is an instrumental version, so that should be OK, right? Just play that one whenever there are some hot teen girls, you know…."

"I understand completely, dawg," Soos said when Gideon had finished. Wendy knew that meant Soos would play the songs in random order.

She said, "Uh, I'll work the player, Soos. You got a lot of stuff on your mind."

He laughed. "Boy, do I! Uh, do I?" He chuckled. "Oh, you're right, I totally do. Thanks, Wendy!"

"Well-p," Stan said, "much as I'd like to watch you do your bit, I misplaced the melon baller a long time back and anyways, we got some business to take care of. Later, everybody!"

He, Ford, and Dan left just as the first tourist bus hauled in. And it was a good haul—sixty tourists, all with money from which, as Stan had always said, they were eager to be separated. Soos took half of them on the Mystery Trail tram ride while Wendy ushered the others through the museum and back into the gift shop, just in time for Mr. Mystery to re-appear and announce the amazing captive Wolf-boy who danced if you threw money at him.

And the curtain opened, and there stretched out and lounging on the stage, propped up on one elbow, was Gideon, smiling through his fake fangs. He crawled on hands and knees up to one of the younger tourists, a teen girl, and all but purred, "Don't tell me you're Li'l Red Riding Hood! I hope you're not scared of widdle ol' me!"

Wendy hit the _play_ button, and he jumped up and went into his "Big Bad Wolf" dance. And, sure enough, the tourists threw money—not just coins, but fives and tens!

"Give you twenty if you'll howl!" one guy yelled.

Gideon grinned, struck a pose, and— _"AoooOOOoooOOOOoooOOOOw!"_

"Worth it!" the guy said, handing over the bill.

After the routine ended, the teen girl lingered to talk to Gideon, who sat perched on the edge of the stage. "Honey," Wendy heard him saying, "if you're gonna be in town for a while, let me take you an' show you some of the _wild_ life!"

 _Oh, brother,_ Wendy thought.

And so it went for the rest of that day, with Gideon doing six shows in all. Then when the Shack closed at a few minutes past six, Gideon, still in wolf-boy costume, sat at the counter reckoning up his take as he stacked bills in order of denominations. "Two hundred and ten, two hundred and fifteen, two hundred and thirty, two hundred and thirty-five. And twenty-two singles. And I'm guessin' on the coins, but I'd reckon I'm gonna do two hundred and sixty, easy."

"New record, dude," Wendy said, smiling as she tilted her stool back and put her feet up on the counter. "Congrats!"

"Yeah, it lets me keep my hand in at performin'," Gideon said stretching. "I reckon I can get along all right without the hornswoggling and all, but I _do_ kinda miss the spotlight, you know?"

"Well, you're real good at holding a crowd's attention," Wendy said. "Some of those fourteen- and fifteen-year-old girls were _interested_ in you, man."

"Yeah, they're right sweet," Gideon said, packing away his cash in a leather pouch. He seemed to hesitate. They were alone in the gift shop—Soos was out putting away the tram, and Melody, who was expecting her second child literally any day, was resting as Abuelita took care of Little Soos off in his new playroom. Gideon cleared his throat. "Uh, Wendy? You and Dipper Pines have investigated some spooky stuff over the years, right?"

"Yeah, just a little bit," Wendy said, amused. Gideon had been there for a lot of it, especially back around Weirdmageddon.

For a few seconds Gideon seemed to be thinking something over. Then he sighed. "I'm gonna show you something," he said. "Nobody outside of my family knows about this." He unfastened the wolf-suit leggings and began to take them off.

"Whoa, dude!" Wendy said.

"Aw, I got swim trunks on underneath," Gideon said. He pushed the right leg of the wolf suit down. "See this?"

"Man, what happened?" Wendy asked, staring at the three-inch long curved scar on the pale outside of his thigh a few inches above the knee.

"I got bit," Gideon said. "Last fall. Out in the woods. Uh, you know what Sunday is?"

"Tomorrow?" Wendy asked.

"Full moon tomorrow night," Gideon said. Then, in a voice quivering with anxiety, he added, "Wendy, I got bit by a werewolf!"

"No way!"

He pulled the wolf-boy pants back up and sat on the stool Dipper always used when he helped Wendy out at the counter. "Yes way. I mean, it ain't like I turn into some slobbering monster—well, there's _some_ slobbering—but I get all furry and my hands and feet turn into paws and I grow a tail and long pointy ears and a kinda snout! And fangs! And I'd run around in the woods nekkid and wild, 'cept my folks put me in a cage now. Well, it's really a kennel for a big dog? But I can't get out of it when I turn. And I ain't yet bit anybody, but I'm afraid I might do it, 'cause the change makes me go kind of crazy and I kinda black out for part of the time."

"Man, are you for real?"

"Yeah," he said miserably. "Would you do me a great big old favor? Would you get in touch with Dipper and see if there's some way or 'nother to cure this here condition of mine? 'Cause I don't mind _playin'_ a wolf boy—but I'll tell you right now, it ain't much fun bein' a _real_ one! I can pay him somethin' for his expenses, tell him."

"Dip won't want your money, but I'll do what I can," Wendy said. "You gotta know, though, it's too late to try to cure you before tomorrow night, man."

"Yeah," Gideon said with a sigh. "So tomorrow night I spend in a cage, like a dumb old dog. I got to say, bein' a werewolf is a weird mix of good and bad. I _hate_ bein' a bipedal lycanthrope—did I say that right?—havin' to be all caged up for two days every month. On the other hand, it did help me get in good physical shape! And to tell you the truth, I'd purely _love_ to get together with one of those adorin' teen-age girls when the moon's right, you know—'cept I just know I'd bite her!"

Trying to get that image out of her head, Wendy said, "Uh, I always face-time with Dipper on Saturday evenings. I promise I'll ask him tonight if you can do anything to, you know, fix this. Whatever Dip says, I'll give you a call before the moon rises tomorrow."

Gideon slipped off the stool and picked up his money pouch and from a nail driven into the back wall retrieved the garment bag with his underwear, jeans, shirt, and jacket inside. "Reckon I better run up to my dressin' room and change into my street clothes. Wendy, I surely do appreciate your help. Man, it just sucks, havin' to go through this agony once every twenty-eight days—well, I don't have to tell you that, do I? You're a girl—"

"Dude," Wendy said, "don't go there!"


	2. Chapter 2

**2: Bad Moon Rising**

* * *

 **(May 2-3, 2015)**

 **From the Journals of Dipper Pines:** _When Wendy called to face-time this evening, I thought she was going to ask me about my injured ankle. I was pumped to tell her that I'm running again and that today in our regional meet, I took first place in the 100-meter dash! Coach says he's going to keep me at 100 meters for the rest of the season._

 _To be fair, that's just four more meets, plus the championship meet, and I'm still a second off my personal best time, but the ankle's feeling good, the JV team is doing great, and—and I wish Wendy had asked, to be honest._

 _But it didn't happen. I mean, I was all excited to tell her all that, and to tell her that in the JV division, Piedmont is currently tied for second place with the biggest school in the district, so Coach Dinson says I'm doing a good job as team captain!_

 _Anyway, before I could say anything, she sprang the news on me right off the bat—Gideon Gleeful thinks he's a werewolf. "Uh, how sure are you?" I asked her, trying hard to picture Mabel's old flame as a ravening beast. Couldn't do it._

 _"Not positive, Dip," she said. "He claims he turns into a real wolf boy every full moon. Started last fall sometime—he was in the woods and something bit him. He thought it was a big dog or maybe even a wolf, but you know Gideon—what he doesn't know about animals in the outdoors could fill an encyclopedia."_

 _"Huh," I said. "You know, the moon's full—"_

 _"Tomorrow night and Monday night, yeah," Wendy said. "Now, what I think I ought to do is this: I'll see Mr. Gleeful and try to get him to let me watch Gideon, together with him and his wife. I'll be able to tell you then whether this is all in Gideon's imagination, or if there's really something happening."_

 _"OK," I told her. "Also, get a video if anything happens, if they'll let you. What do I do?"_

 _She sighed. "Well, you know about stuff like this. Check your sources, maybe call Ford, see first if it's even likely that there are werewolves in Gravity Falls and second, if there are, is there a cure for—is the word lycanthropy?"_

 _"Right," I told her. "But lycanthropy doesn't necessarily mean physically turning into a wolf or a wolf-man. Wolf-boy, I guess. It's also a psychological term for a mental condition that makes the victim THINK they're turning into a beast. I'm pretty sure that's technically called 'clinical lycanthropy.' The real deal is 'physical lycanthropy.' What do you think, Wendy? Is he really having the problem, or is it just that he's a little nuts?"_

 _"Dunno," she told me. "But it's weird—he's got, like, buffed up—"_

 _"What? This IS Gideon we're talking about, right? The fat kid you drop-kicked?"_

 _She grinned when I mentioned that. "Yeah, but he's thirteen now. He's taller than he used to be, and I don't know if he lost weight or just grew up enough to carry it better. Oh, and he's lost the beehive hairdo, too, still full, but he's got a pony tail if you can imagine. Kinda reminds me a little of that puppeteer guy that Mabel was all gaga about for a while—Gabe?"_

 _"Yeah, Gabe, who makes out with hand puppets," I said._

 _"Right, him. I mean, Gideon's still chunky and still has that turned-up nose and all, but some of the teen girls comin' into the Shack actually think he's kinda hot now."_

 _"Li'l Gideon," I said again, hearing the flat, unbelieving tone in my own voice. "Girls think he's . . . hot."_

 _Chuckling, Wendy said, "Not me, Dip! The thirteen-year-olds."_

 _"Oh, I didn't think you meant he appealed to YOU," I said. "I was just thinking, huh, if some girls think that Li'l Gideon is HOT—there might be hope for me, too!"_

* * *

As soon as he and Wendy got off the phone, Dipper called his Grunkle Ford, who (as always) was ready not only to listen to him, but to believe him.

"Werewolves," Ford said in a thoughtful tone. "Well, one always hears rumors, and there are certainly many strange creatures in the Valley, as you know very well. I recall that Soos told me that the mailman whose route's downtown was probably a werewolf, but he isn't—he just has a condition called hyperpilositiy, or in layman's terms, extreme hairiness. Like Stanley, but cranked up to—what is it, an eleven? Is that right?"

"That's about right," Dipper said, forcing himself not to giggle. He remembered the mailman, one of about six who worked in the Valley, who was rotund, lavishly bearded, and sported a mat of auburn hair on both arms and peeking through the neck of his shirt. His name happened to be de Wolfe, which might have given Soos the idea, but despite his furry look and fierce scowl (an illusion, mostly, caused by ultra-shaggy eyebrows), Mr. de Wolfe was soft-spoken, genial, and friendly. He could talk to you for hours about how his feet hurt.

"Hmm," Ford said. "Well, honestly I don't think _true_ werewolfery is very likely, but I'll see what I can learn about lycanthropy. Kicking around in the back of my mind is something about how to cure it. I'll see if I can locate that. Have you tried on the Internet?"

"Yeah," Dipper said. "Lot of stuff about killing the werewolf who bit you as the cure, but I don't see how that would work in real life."

"No, no, this was something about the pH of the blood, I believe. The condition seems to be akin to a viral infection more than anything else. I'll check into it. The full moon is—oh, my goodness, it's tomorrow night! When was the boy bitten?"

"I don't know for sure. Last fall sometime."

"That might be crucial. In the few classical accounts that discuss curing the condition, there's usually a limit of half a year or so for the cure, I believe, measuring from the victim's first transformation. Try to get some more information, Mason, and I'll check in with you tomorrow afternoon."

Dipper briefly explained that Wendy proposed to witness what happened to Gideon when the next night's full moon rose. "She says his folks make him sleep in a dog kennel, I guess? One of those metal cage things? I guess that means she should be safe."

"If she can manage it, it's always helpful to have a confirming witness. And if she could video the event—"

"I suggested that already. I'll call her back and tell her to do it."

And he did, and finally he got a chance to tell her about how well his injured ankle had healed, and how successful the track team was, and after giving a cheer and congratulating Dipper, she reminded him, "Just a month until the summer starts, Dipper!"

"I'm so looking forward to it!" he said. "Hey, do me a favor. Don't let any werewolves bite you!"

"Try my best," she said, laughing. You have a good night, Dip. And, just between you and me—peppermint, man!"

Their code word for deep kissing. "I so want a taste right now!" he said.

* * *

Gideon hadn't told his parents that Wendy would be dropping by, so when Bud Gleeful, looking rather like an almost-fully-inflated hot-air balloon in a colorful yellow, red, and green Hawaiian shirt, opened the door, his expression showed surprise. "Why, Wendy Corduroy!" he said. "Come on in, come in! Corinne! We have a visitor! Set down, Wendy. Say, have you come to ask me about trading in that sweet classic Dodge Dart of yours?"

"Thanks, Mr. G," Wendy said, settling into an armchair. "But no, I don't want to get rid of the Dart."

"Oh, think about it, now, yes, ponder it in your mind!" Bud said. "Old car like that, well, I know you restored it, but it _is_ old, you know, just a headache waiting to happen, oh, my, yes. Now if you want to trade up, I could put you into a really sweet last year's model sports car or sedan—"

"Thanks, anyhow, but I like the Dart better," Wendy said, smiling. "I can't get my hands dirty workin' on one that's all computerized up! The Dart's just my speed. Hi, Mrs. G!"

Corinne Gleeful, with her mane of gray hair and her thin, nervous face, hadn't changed all that much from the days when Li'l Gideon's overbearing behavior and incidental use of a magic amulet kept her near the edge of madness. From what she'd heard, Wendy knew that Gideon had swung back like a pendulum and now was more than sweet to his mother—but she still seemed jumpy, as if that old pendulum could sway back at any second. She greeted Wendy and apologized that they'd just had an early dinner.

"Oh, I didn't come to be a pest," Wendy said. "Uh—where's Gideon?"

"Why, he's up in his room, yes, upstairs in his room," Bud said, sounding a little edgy. "Poor boy's just tuckered out, I think. Probably turned in already."

"Is that where his cage is?" Wendy asked.

Bud stared at her blankly. "I'm sure I don't know—"

"It's there," his wife said softly. "And he's in it. It's so awful!"

Bud began, "Now, now, sugar dumpling—"

"We've got to do something, Buddy!" his wife said. "Our baby needs help!"

"I've heard about his getting' bit and all," Wendy said. "And I've got friends who know about stuff like this—well, or they can learn about it, anyway. Dipper and Stanford Pines."

"We don't want anybody to know," Bud said. "It's the shame of the family."

"But Dr. Pines thinks he might be able to find a cure," Wendy said.

"Come with me," Corinne said. "I'll take you up to see him."

Bud began, "Now, honey lamb—"

"Mr. Gleeful," Wendy said, "if he had pneumonia, you'd take him to the doctor. This is the same thing."

"Well—you have a point," he admitted.

Wendy's first thought on seeing the cage was _How did they get that thing through the door?_ But of course, she immediately realized, Bud had brought it in unassembled and then had put it together. She'd expected something like a pet carrier, but the kennel that occupied most of the floor space was three feet wide, five tall, and six long. A mattress covered the bottom, and Li'l Gideon sat against the corner. "Ma!" he exclaimed when they came in. "You brought Wendy?"

"Relax, Gideon," Wendy told him. "I'm here to help." She briefly told him what she wanted to do, and he immediately agreed.

"Only," he said, "when it happens, don't stand close to the cage at all. I mean, keep three feet away. I kinda go crazy."

"When did this happen for the first time?" Wendy asked.

"Lemme see. It wasn't long after Christmas, I know. Maybe a week?"

"It was right at the beginning of January," his mother said. "A cold night. We heard the door slam not long after dark, and Gideon was gone."

"Next thing I knew, I was out in the woods, nekkid," Gideon said. "The sun was comin' up. I like to have froze to death! But the Sheriff was out on patrol and picked me up, wrapped me in an old blanket, and brought me home."

"Our poor little boy had torn his clothes all to ribbons," Bud said. "We found 'em in a heap right there in front of the window."

Wendy glanced at the window. The curtains were parted, and night was falling outside. She could see the yellow-orange horizon glow that preceded the rising of the full moon. "And then?"

"Well, the next night he sorta started to change," Bud said. "That time before it went too far, I shoved him into the closet. Kept him there, but he done a lot of damage to his clothes. The next day, I went up over to Hirschville, where nobody would know me, and bought this here protective enclosure at a specialty store so we could make sure our boy was secure."

"It was an All-Four Pets store, Daddy," Gideon said. "Wendy knows this here is a dog kennel—wait, wait, I think it's beginnin'!"

Wendy took out her phone and started to record the video. "How can you tell?" she asked.

"I get this feelin! I gotta take off my shirt, 'scuse me!" He was wearing dark-blue pajamas, and he hastily removed the top. Wendy saw that the change was indeed beginning—his chest bristled with a new growth of blond hair, and he was developing a beard.

"Hang on, boy!" Bud said from behind Wendy. "Fight it!"

"I'm tryin'! I always—try!"

Gideon's limbs were re-shaping, his arms becoming elongated, the wrists extending. His nails became black claws. He clenched his teeth, the canines growing into fangs as his bulbous nose darkened into a doggish snout. He was trying to talk, but the sounds came out as throaty growls. The rising moon shone in at the window.

Now his ears had grown long and pointed. His eyes had taken on a cast of madness, staring, wild. He flung himself at the side of the cage, and Wendy took an involuntary step back.

"Now, that there protective enclosure can contain a bear," Bud said. "So, don't worry none."

The transformation completed itself. Gideon's shoulders had broadened, his neck had shortened, and his head took on some of the contours of a wolf's, though he had no dog-like snout, just a little more bulge to his upper jaw. He threw back his head and howled. The seat of pajama bottoms twitched— _My God, Wendy thought, he's grown a tail!_

"We better let him have some alone time," Bud suggested quietly. "He's gonna tear off them jammies in a minute."

Wendy stopped recording. They went outside, and Bud locked the bedroom door. "Window's got bars," he said. "They're thin, look decorative, but they're real strong. Even if he got out of the enclosure, he's safe enough. Noisy, though."

"Exactly where did he get bit?" Wendy asked.

A distracted-sounding Bud replied, "On the leg—wait, you mean the geographical place, I guess. Oh, now, Mother, do you remember where he said?"

Corinne said, "He was in the woods on the edge of Circle Park. He can't remember why he went there, but he thought it was to meet somebody."

As the caged boy—or wolf-boy—howled furiously, Wendy winced. "OK, I think this is what I need. I'll get in touch with Dr. Pines right away, and he or I will get in contact with you tomorrow."

Corinne touched her arm. "Help my boy," she whispered.

And just for that one second, she did not look afraid.


	3. Chapter 3

**3: Howling in the Woods**

 **(May 4, 2015)**

* * *

On Monday afternoon, after school and after track practice but before dinner and—most important—well before sunset and moonrise, Dipper successfully set up a three-way conference Yipe call with Ford, Gideon, and himself. His laptop showed three images: himself, through the front-facing camera, in the smallest window, and then Ford, at his own computer in the basement of the Shack, and a worried-looking Gideon in his room. Dipper could also just glimpse Bud and Corinne Gleeful, sitting on folding chairs at the edge of the image.

Mabel, sitting next to Dipper, chirped, "You're looking good, Gideon! You're growing up hot!"

"Why, thank you," he said, smiling and visibly blushing. "And you have the most beautiful smile now that the braces are off your teeth!"

"I saved 'em!" Mabel bragged. "Hammered 'em flat and put them in my scrapbook! Wanna see?"

"Guys, please," Dipper said. "We're trying to help Gideon with his problem. Go ahead, Grunkle Ford. What do you need to know?"

"Thank you, Dipper," Ford said, his voice a little thin.

"Turn up the volume on your microphone!" Mabel ordered.

"Oh—um. How?"

Dipper patiently gave him instructions, and after a half-minute of fumbling, Ford adjusted the volume. "Is that an improvement? It is? Good. Gideon, it's vital for me to know a few things. The first and most urgent is when exactly were you bitten?"

"My stars, I don't rightly recall the exact date," Gideon said. "It wasn't bad, you know, just barely broke the skin. Anyhow, that was before New Year's, I know that much for sure. It might've even been as early as, oh, right around the first week of December, I just can't recall. But it could've been right before New Year's."

"It was early in December," Bud said, his voice hard to hear because he wasn't miked.

Ford asked, "Might it have been as early as December the sixth?"

"It could be," Gideon said. "It could be. I'm sorry, for some reason my little old memory of it is all fuzzy."

Ford nodded. "And can you tell me the first date when you experienced a transformation?"

"Now, I can remember that real good! It was on the night of January the fourth. I was feeling real itchy and restless, and it was right cold, but I went to open my window, and the moon was coming up, and the next thing I knew, I was standing next to the road as the sun was comin' up the next morning, all shivering and"—he raised a hand to his mouth and whispered—"unclothed! Lucky for me the sheriff and deputy came by."

"Poor guy!" Mabel said. "Did they arrest you?"

"Uh, no, no, they didn't. See, I didn't remember why I was nekkid—'scuse the language, Mabel—and freezin', so I told them I'd been robbed? They decided it was an impossible case to solve, but they were good enough to give me an Army surplus blanket to wrap up in and they drove me home."

"He showed up lookin' like a little burrito," Bud put in. "Or an egg roll, if it had been fried real brown. I love 'em crispy and fried real brown! Uh, it was a brown blanket."

Ford didn't respond to him. He was looking down, as if consulting a document on his desk. "That was on the fourth of January. February, March, April. Then your transformation last night was your fifth."

"Yessir, that would be right," Gideon said.

"We kept him in the house for all those times," Mrs. Gleeful said.

Ford muttered to himself: "Hmm. The change isn't normally permanent until the victim either kills a human being and tastes human blood or until the seventh occasion has occurred, this says. That gives us at least one or two months, anyway. All right, Gideon, next question: Back in December, on the occasion when you were bitten—well, why in the world did you go out into the woods at night?"

"It wasn't rightly what you'd call night," Gideon said. "Just, you know, right after sundown. I—well, this is embarrassing, 'specially 'cause nothing happened, and Mama and Daddy don't know it, but—oh, shoot. All right, I went to Circle Park 'cause I was s'posed to meet a girl there."

"You scallywag!" Mabel said, laughing. "Mazel tov! Who's the lucky lady, Giddy?"

Looking sheepish, Gideon said, "I don't really know! She was just visiting in the Valley, I think. Never had seen her in school, and she talked with a kinda funny accent. Canadian, maybe. Thirteen-year-old girl, I'd say, right pretty, but dressed poor. I ran into her downtown one afternoon."

"Did she approach you?" Ford asked.

"Not really. She was just driftin' along, lookin' in store windows kinda wistful and sad, like she'd like to go in, but—well, like I say, she was dressed poor, in an old faded dress too big on her and mismatched shoes. I felt sorry for her, 'cause she seemed real lonesome, so I stopped and talked. I guess we kinda hit it off, you know what I mean? She wanted to—uh. Well, she wanted to watch the moon rise in Circle Park with me. She said. But she didn't show up."

"What is her name?" Ford asked.

"Funny name, pretty but strange, you know?" Gideon said. "Ulva. Ulva Lupei."

Ford looked down, obviously scribbling something in furious haste. He spelled out the name aloud "Is that correct?"

"I guess," Gideon said. "I never saw it written down."

"All right," Ford said. "So you went to the park, and the girl wasn't there. What then?"

"Well, I hung on until the moon came up. It was a cloudy night, but there were breaks, you know? And when I could see the moon through the clouds, I reckoned I'd been stood up and should start out from home."

"Do you remember what time that was?"

He frowned. "This is where it turns hazy. It wasn't long after sunset, maybe five o'clock or a little later? Dusky-dark, you know? I was settin' on a swing in the park, and I got up and—I think I heard somethin'. Don't know what, maybe just a kind of rustling in the bushes. You know, the park has that old clock tower on the little hill, an' behind it the woods start? I kinda remember walkin' past the tower. Then—I reckon it was about then—then this doggy came up out of the bushes."

"You're sure it was a dog?" Ford asked.

Gideon shrugged. "Well—I thought it was. 'Bout the size of a German shepherd. I couldn't rightly tell the color—dark and kinda shaggy. It acted sort of scared of me. Reluctant, you know? Kinda crept up to me, with its belly low to the ground, whinin' right pitiful. I held out my hand and it sniffed me, and I patted its head. I felt sorry for it—its fur felt all matted, like it hadn't been took good care of. I tried to coax it to follow me, 'cause I thought if Mama and Daddy wouldn't let me keep it, I could at least feed it and clean it up and maybe find who owned it."

"I knew that there was good inside down deep inside of you!" Mabel said, punching the air. "Sort of like little gold nuggets hidden in the fat deposits of your body!"

"Uh—thank you?" Gideon replied.

"You are most welcome! What did you name the dog?"

"Well, nothin'. I remember walkin' away and whistlin' to see if it would follow me—and then suddenly my leg hurt real bad and I realized somethin' had run out and bit me!"

"The dog," Ford said.

"Maybe. Maybe." Gideon frowned. "I just don't know. I fell down, I guess, and maybe passed out, 'cause next thing I remember, I was layin' on the ground. And the dog was—lickin' my face. It sure didn't act like it was angry at me or anything. More like it wanted me to wake up. I, well, I kind of believe it laid there to keep me warm, you know? And when I set up and found out I could take my weight on that leg, it run off into the woods. I went back home, and I didn't see the girl again." He sighed. "And I reckon that was why I turned into a wolf man right around the first of January—that bite, I mean."

"When the police brought him home that morning, we took him straight to the clinic to have him checked out," Bud said. "He had a touch of hypothermia, but he got over that quick. No frostbite or anything. And the animal bite was superficial, already faded by then. We told Dr. le Fievre about it and he took a look but didn't reckon that Gideon needed rabies shots or nothin'."

"Mm," Ford said. "Oregon is free of terrestrial rabies, except in very rare occasions when a cat or fox acquires an infection from eating or being bitten by a rabid bat."

"Anyhow," Bud said, "the doc treated Gideon, and in two-three days he was OK again."

Ford overrode him: "Could the dog have been a wolf, Gideon?"

"Might could," Gideon admitted. "I'm not real familiar with wolves."

"I never heard of wolves in these parts, though," Bud said.

"And you're not likely to," Ford said. "There are probably fewer than 100 wild individual wolves in the whole state, and their territory is a swath from the southwest border to the northeast, a crescent-like curve south of us. They haven't been spotted in Roadkill County for a century." He paused, then added, "However, this may not have been a normal wolf, but a fully-transitioned lycanthrope. That's a werewolf that completely metamorphoses into wolf shape—not just a wolfman, but a literal wolf."

"Are those common?" Dipper asked.

"No, quite rare, in fact," Ford told them. "Werewolves come in different subspecies. To be a full lycanthrope, one must be descended from a line of werewolves. One must—embrace its nature and accept it and, well, rejoice in it. And such individuals, the lore says, are either immortal or extraordinarily long-lived—unless killed by human means."

The questioning went on, but Gideon couldn't really add anything more. Since dusk—and moonrise—approached by that time, Ford cut off the questioning. "Gideon and his parents have agreed to let me record his transformation tonight," Ford said. "It may not even happen—the moon must be 99% to 100% full to trigger a metamorphosis, and tonight will be right on the cusp of that. I can stream it."

"But if anything happens, don't let Mabel watch," Gideon pleaded. "I always tear any clothes I got on to ribbons."

Dipper agreed, and Mabel left the room, protesting. Gideon got ready for bed, and they saw his dad unlock the big cage—Ford had swiveled the camera to take it in. Gideon, in dark-gray pajamas, crept in and waited patiently until Bud had locked the cage.

The Pines family had dinner, and then Dipper went to his room, where he had his laptop set up. "Nine-oh-six. It's time for moonrise," he said, checking the clock on the computer.

The lights in Gideon's room had been turned out and he lay on the mattress inside the cage. Minutes ticked by. The window behind the cage lit up as the moon peeked through—but nothing happened to Gideon, except he sat up and stared at the window. Then he rang a bell—Dipper could make that out, though there was no sound—and after a few minutes, Bud came in, turned on the lights, unlocked the cage, and Gideon crept out. He glanced at the camera and shook his head.

Dipper's door opened, and Mabel asked, "Well?"

"Not gonna happen tonight," Dipper said.

"I can't even see the moon!" Mabel said from the window. She'd opened it and leaned perilously out so she could gaze to the east.

"It won't rise here for another thirty-odd minutes," Dipper said.

"What? Get out of town!"

"It's true," Dipper said. Difference in latitude and longitude."

"Boosh!" Mabel said, miming an exploding brain. "What if a werewolf in Piedmont has a girlfriend werewolf in Paris and they face-time right at moonrise?"

"Well," Dipper said, "One of them would be human and one would be a werewolf, because the moonrise time for Paris would come eight hours before the moon would come up in San Francisco." He turned off the computer. "Guess you're not gonna see Gideon strip tonight."

"Big disappointment," Mabel said.

Dipper's phone rang—Grunkle Ford checking in. "We came up without a transformation tonight," Ford said. "Wendy and I will try to record tomorrow. Gideon's safe until then."

"Yeah, we saw. We were watching the livestream."

"I wasn't surprised," Ford said. "The moon is noticeably gibbous right now. I'd guess 98%, if that."

"What's next?" Dipper asked.

Ford sighed. "Well—I'm going to try some of the ancient remedies. They will involve altering the pH of Gideon's blood, which is tricky to manage. We want mild acidosis, nothing dangerous. Dr. le Fievre—who's lived here long enough now, I guess, to take things like werewolfery in stride—will monitor him. But what I really want to do is locate this girl Gideon met. May I call on Wendy to help?"

"Of course," Dipper said, surprised. "Why ask me?"

"Because you're close to each other," Ford said. "And—well, there may be some danger."

Dipper bit back a demand to come up to Gravity Falls to stand by Wendy. Because of school and track and responsibilities, he couldn't do that at the time. Just a few more weeks—but Gideon might not have that long. Forcing himself, Dipper said, "Wendy's tough and brave, Grunkle Ford. Go ahead and ask her to help, but do what you can to help her be safe. And make sure you involve me, OK? I want to know what you're planning and what Wendy's getting herself into."

"I will keep you informed," Ford promised.

And then, at nearly eleven, Wendy called Dipper. "Dude, I guess Ford talked to you?"

"Yeah," Dipper said. "Are you going to help?"

"Oh, yeah," Wendy said. "He just wants me to see if I can locate the girl Gideon says he met. He's gonna equip me with, like, anti-werewolf charms, I guess? I'll ask around and see if I can track her down. Somebody in town must know about her."

"Be careful," Dipper said. "We'll be coming up on the first day of June."

"I'll be in one piece," Wendy promised. "I'll take care, Dip. You, too. 'Cause I love you, man."

"I love you too, Wendy," Dipper said. He felt a thrill every time she said it to him—because they didn't speak about it all that often.

They felt it, though. They both felt the love.


	4. Chapter 4

**4: Gone**

* * *

 **(May 5, 2015)**

 **From the Journals of Dipper Pines:** _This morning my phone went off at school—silently, because I have it set on vibrate. I don't want the teachers to confiscate it! As soon as I got a chance, I checked it. I had a voice message from Grunkle Ford, but all he said was "Dipper, call me." I wish he'd text, but he's hit or miss about that, just as he is with "electron mail" as he keeps calling it._

 _Anyway, I had to wait forty minutes until lunch period, and then I called. "I was in class—" I started._

 _He cut me short: "That's all right, Mason. I've got some bad news. I wanted you and Mabel to hear it from me first. Susan Flowers is gone."_

 _I felt a moment of confusion. I think at his mention of "bad news," I had been expecting something more devastating from Ford, something about him, or Grunkle Stan, or Wendy. I'm ashamed to write this, but the real bad news gave me a sense of relief. "When did it happen?" I asked._

 _"This morning around seven, apparently. The facility had my number as a contact, and they notified me. When did you last see her?"_

 _"Sunday afternoon," I told him. "Dad drove Mabel and me up."_

 _"How was she then?"_

 _"About the same." I thought. "Weaker than when you saw her, a lot weaker. She's never been very responsive. Sometimes she'd say a word or two. And sometimes—" I teared up, unexpectedly, and the words caught in my throat. "Sometimes Mabel could make her laugh." I caught my breath. "We could tell she was going downhill. She's been fading away for weeks." I forced myself to inhale deeply. "Is—is there anything we can do?"_

 _"No. That's a kind thought, but no. I've agreed to make the arrangements. She left no will, but I've learned that her husband wanted to be cremated and his ashes scattered in Monterey Bay. Now, Susan may be Catholic—I haven't ascertained that beyond all doubt, but the home is a Catholic facility, well, you know that. Anyway, the Church prefers interment to cremation. I'm asking Father Perez here in the Falls to advise me about what to do. I'll certainly let you and Mabel know."_

 _"Thanks," I told him._

 _"Mason, I'm so sorry to burden you with this responsibility. Mabel will have to be told."_

 _"I'll take care of it," I told him._

 _I didn't have any appetite for a school lunch._

* * *

Dipper explained to Coach Dinson that a friend of the family's had died and asked to be excused from practice. Dinson smiled. "I understand," he said. "I'm sorry about your loss, Dipper. Sure, take the afternoon off. We're in good shape."

And so, when Mabel climbed aboard the school bus, he surprised her by coming to sit beside her. "Brobro!" she chirped, her grin ear-to-ear. "You didn't get cut from the track team, did you?"

He shook his head. "I heard from Grunkle Ford," he said quietly. "Bad news."

She turned pale. She was wearing her bouquet sweater, dusky-red with a dozen different blossoms appliqued on it. "What?"

The bus started and pulled out. "Maybe I should wait until we get home. Fifteen minutes or so."

"Tell me now," she said urgently.

Dipper drew a deep breath. "It's about Susan," he said quietly. "She—"

Mabel drooped. "She's dead, isn't she?"

"Yeah."

Mabel leaned on his shoulder and wept silently. "I knew it was coming," she whispered.

"I know. I could tell, too."

"What—what now?"

"Grunkle Ford's working to make the arrangements. He'll let us know."

"Should—should we go up—to see—to see—"

"It wouldn't make any difference to her now," Dipper said.

"She never came back, did she?" Mabel asked. "After that horrible thing that her husband did to her. She just . . . went away and . . . never came back."

Mr. and Mrs. Pines didn't know Susan Flowers, who had performed as Trish Razor, but Alex Pines understood Mabel's feelings quite well. He comforted her as best he could while Dipper waited for Ford's call.

It came at about 7:45 PM. "Well," Ford said, "this is very unusual. I'm not sure I like it."

"What?" Dipper asked.

"Someone has claimed the body," Ford said. "You remember how hard we tried to find some relative of hers—without any luck. But about noon today, a man named Flores turned up at the home with documents that showed he was her brother. He arranged for a hearse and took the body for burial."

"Where?" Dipper asked.

"That is one of the things I don't like, Mason. Flores had all the identification he needed to prove he was who he said he was: John Simeon Flores, priest."

"Flores," Dipper said. "Flowers. Well, I can see how that would work. It might have been her first stage name—"

"Possibly," Ford acknowledged. "But Father Flores is supposed to be the pastor of St. Anthony's Catholic Church in Twin Peaks, Washington."

"That's not so far from Gravity Falls!" Dipper said.

"The town isn't. But, Mason—there is no St. Anthony's church in Twin Peaks. Not Catholic, not any denomination. There's not one in the county. I've called all the ones in Washington State, and not a one of the people I've talked to has ever heard of a Father John Flores."

"What does that mean?" Dipper asked.

He heard Ford sigh. "That, in the middle of this werewolf scare, the other thing, the thing that sent the T'klatlumodh to Wendy last December—that thing's not finished yet, either."

"What should we do?" Dipper asked.

"For the moment, there's nothing that can be done," Ford told him heavily. Father Perez offered to say prayers for her soul, and I told him that would be a comfort. I'm going to try to track down this so-called Father Flores. Tonight, though—well, don't worry about that."

"Grunkle Ford! Come on. What about tonight?"

Ford fell silent for a moment, as though pondering. "Very well. You have a right to know. All right, Dipper. Gideon Gleeful's first encounter with what is evidently a fully-transformed werewolf occurred in the woods near Circle Park. This evening Wendy and I had planned to go to the park and try to call the werewolf in. I have a special recording, and Wendy will be wearing protective amulets. If the creature in question really is a full lycan, as I believe they are called, the wolf can change forms at will, independent of the moon phases. We will try to induce her to take human form and talk to us. We have to know exactly what is afflicting Gideon in order to counter it." He paused. "I know you don't want Wendy to be involved."

"I don't," Dipper admitted. "But—she knows how to handle herself. Just make sure you give her good backup, Grunkle Ford."

"I'm going fully equipped," Ford told him. "If a crisis arises, I can stop the lycan."

"You mean kill it," Dipper said.

"If necessary."

"I'm going to call Wendy now," Dipper said.

"Very well. She should be here in half an hour or so."

"You take care, too," Dipper said.

"Thank you, Mason. I will."

* * *

"Man," Wendy said, "that's pretty grim, Dipper! Someone stealin' her _body_? Why?"

"It has to do with that Dreamsnake thing, Ford believes," Dipper said. "Somebody besides us must be investigating it."

"Yeah, or maybe whoever it was that created the thing is in on this."

"We'll have to plan," Dipper said. He paused. "So—you're going werewolf hunting tonight?"

"Yep."

"Take care, Lumberjack Girl."

"I will. I can't wait until you guys get here next month. Dipper, how's Mabel handling all this?"

"She's—well, not good, but not terrible. She's down, but, you know. We knew Susan wouldn't be around for very long. Still, it hurts her."

"Want me to talk to her?"

"Thanks," Dipper said. "But I think she'll deal with it. She's Mabel. She'll bounce back."

"OK. I'm gonna have to leave to meet Ford now. Love you."

"Love you, too."

Dipper hung up and sat staring out his window. Out there, somewhere—

Like a snake coiling and probing the defenses, someone, something crept.

 _It's not over yet. Who knows? Maybe the_ _T'klatlumodh was even connected to the werewolf thing._

Gravity Falls, man. You could never tell.

Not for certain.

Never.

* * *

 _To be continued . . ._


	5. Chapter 5

**5: Something Wicked**

* * *

 **(May 5, 2015)**

"You don't have to do this," Ford told Wendy for possibly the twelfth time.

"I know, Dr. P," she replied. "But I want to. I mean, Gideon can still be kind of a creep, but, dang it, he's one of our own."

"True," Ford said. "I haven't forgotten that he joined us in our attempt to force Bill back through the Portal, though that effort failed. However, my brother tells me Gideon used to be something of a problem child."

"That's putting it mildly," Wendy said. She sat in the passenger seat of Ford's Lincoln. They had arrived at Circle Park. Though the sun had set nearly an hour earlier, some dusk-light still lingered in the west. The moon, now past full and waning, wouldn't rise until after ten. "Think it's dark enough?" she asked.

"We can see." They got out of the car and walked to the edge of the woods. Wendy knew that stretch of forest—except for a couple of logging roads, there wasn't a route in or out across the ridges, all the way to the bluffs. Ford took out a spray can and created an invisible circle by spritzing the ground.

"What does that do?" Wendy asked.

"Hmm? Oh, it prevents animals from catching my scent. Turn on your transceiver, please."

Wendy reached to her belt and pressed the button on the plastic cell-phone like device clipped there. Ford powered up a tablet, stared at its display, and said, "Say something."

"Testing," she said. "Testing, testing, testing."

"Good, I'm recording your signal. Triangulation is working . . .. Now, you have the wards on you?"

"The jewelry?" she asked good-humoredly. "Necklace, check. Chain around my waist, check. I also have a special axe, by the way—the edge has a thin coat of silver."

"My word!" Ford exclaimed. "Well—you did come prepared!"

"I've also spritzed my clothes with the wolfsbane essential oil," Wendy said. "So—I guess I'm ready."

"Then I'll start the call," Ford said. "Good luck, Wendy."

She smiled at him. "Same to you, dude. If I yell—you get there quick!"

"I will do my best."

Ford set up a small but powerful speaker and plugged it into an .mp3 player—not the most up-to-date tech, but he was comfortable with it, he said. He pressed a button, and from the speaker issued a long-drawn out, shivery howl, high-pitched and penetrating.

He played it three times, then paused.

Wendy could hear a light breeze rustling the pines and from the highway, the occasional distant growl of a truck or purr of a car. Then from far out in the dark came an answering howl—"Ooo, oo-oo OOOOOoooo!"

"Wolf?" she asked.

"Nearly," Ford said grimly. "Go ahead, carefully. Remember—not too far!"

"Hundred steps and I stop," Wendy said.

As she counted them off, she heard a slightly different recorded howl from Ford's speaker, and a few moments later, the answer from the night. She reached a clearing where a tall Ponderosa pine, a monster over 150 feet tall, had crashed to earth a few years before, taking a swath of smaller trees down, from the look of it. She stepped up onto the trunk and waited, remembering the video she'd helped Ford with—the one in which Gideon had actually become a hairy monster, though contained in a cage.

He looked strange, but she wouldn't say _scary_ , not after some of the stuff she'd seen. Compared to the Shapeshifter, wolf-boy Gideon was no more frightening than the stuffed animal of indeterminate species that she hugged every night.

She tensed, listening. Whatever approached was cautious and quiet—but not silent. Wendy picked up tell-tale sounds, thin twigs not snapped but crushed beneath something's feet, a quick inhalation as that something sniffed the air.

"I'm right here," Wendy said. "Is that you—Ulva?" She held her breath, listening.

Then, from right behind her, startling her: "I'm here."

Wendy forced herself to turn slowly. "Ulva."

The girl stood in shadow. Shaggy-maned, with hair down to her shoulders, she seemed to be naked, but in nothing but starlight, Wendy couldn't tell for sure. Ulva tilted her head in a doglike way. Wendy caught the dim twin reflected gleams in her eyes, looking cold as ice. "Who you are?" The figure balled its fists, and then more slowly said, "Who . . . are you?"

"I'm a friend of Gideon's," Wendy replied. "The boy you bit."

"I did not," Ulva said. "No bite of me." Her voice had a breathy, light tone, and a trace of accent, though Wendy could not place it.

"You know the boy I mean," Wendy said. "He was bitten back as the nights were growing long."

"White hair," the girl said. "Yes. Lonely boy. Kind to me in the town. Yes."

"Can—will you come close enough for me to see you?"

"No. You stink."

Wendy realized it was not an insult, but just a flat statement—Ulva must have detected the odor of wolfsbane. "For protection," Wendy said.

"Not I attack humans." The soft girly voice held a note of reproval.

"But there are others who do, aren't there?" Wendy asked.

Ulva remained silent, sullen. Wendy said, "The boy was bitten. It's started. He's turning."

"Did not bite him. I not listen to words of Dark One."

Wendy hesitated. "Who is the Dark One?" she asked.

She became aware that Ulva was pacing, like a tiger testing the boundaries of its cage, three steps left, three back right, as though she could not hold herself still. "Speaks to some. In minds, not words."

"Do you dream," Wendy asked, "of serpents?"

She heard the angry, upset hiss of a sharply-indrawn breath. "Go! Run!"

"Wait! I'm looking for a way to cure Gideon. He doesn't want to walk your path. He wants to remain human."

"I have heard his call," the girl said quietly. "In nights of bright moon."

"He _is_ changing, but not to a wolf. To a form part human and part wolf. A two-legged form." Wendy lost sight of her in the tree-shadows, but heard her footfall and then picked up her silhouette again. "The moon forces the change in him. If you care anything about him, help us to help him."

"No. Can't."

"Do you want to force him to live this cursed half-life?" Wendy asked.

"Nnoooo." It came out almost as a growl.

"What can we do to help him, then? Tell me!"

For a few moments Wendy thought Ulva had melted away, back into the forest. Then she heard her voice from closer, almost a whisper: "You need some blood from one who bit him."

"Who's that?" Wendy asked, straining to see in the darkness. "Tell me the name."

"I don't dare speak it. I must go!"

Wendy heard the rush of feet, and a moment later a long gray shape arced over the trunk on which she stood, a form like a dog, but not a dog—

And almost like a sharp yelp, but intelligible, a word came back to her: "Freiki!"

Then Ulva was gone.

The communicator on Wendy's belt vibrated, and she hit the button. "Here."

"Wendy," Ford's voice said, soft but urgent, "come back. I'm detecting a pack of them."

"Did you get what Ulva said? The one who bit Gideon was named—"

 _"Freiki,"_ came a triumphant, growling voice from right behind her.

* * *

Mabel and Dipper sat side by side in the room they shared for arts, crafts, and Dipper's music. Like little kids, they sat on the floor, their backs against the wall. "It'll be OK, Dip," Mabel said quietly. "Wendy knows what she's doing."

"I know, I know, I worry too much," Dipper told her. "But I can't help it. Mabel, you OK?"

A pause. "You mean about Susan?"

"Yeah."

He heard her take a deep, shaky breath. "I hate that she died without, you know, getting better. And that she died all alone. I always had hopes. Sometimes she'd seem so cheerful."

"That was _you_ , Sis," Dipper said. "That was all you. Whatever else you remember about Susan, always recall you brought a little cheer into her life when there wasn't any. You did good, Sis. You did good."

Mabel made a little sound that might have been a weak laugh. "You sound like Soos."

 _"Ew!"_ But he wasn't really disgusted. He even smiled.

Mabel reached for his hand and held it. "Why did that fake priest steal her body?" she asked plaintively. "That was—it was so mean. Worse than that. It was a _sin!_ It was _wrong_!"

"Yeah, it was. And scary. It seems like such a pointless thing to do."

"Dip, I want to track him down. See that he gets punished."

It was Dipper's turn to pause before a reluctant reply: "I can't promise anything."

"Mystery twins?"

Dipper gave in: "Yeah. Mystery Twins. We'll do our best, Sis."

She squeezed his hand. And he sat there in the darkened room wondering what was happening to Wendy, six hundred miles away.

* * *

And about halfway between, in a faded house trailer tucked into a niche between two stony ridges in the barren land north of Reno in Washoe County, Nevada, an old man named Carl sat drinking beer and listening to a Beethoven concert on short-wave radio.

The reception wasn't great, and behind the melodies of the Ninth Symphony the gas generator out in its shed behind the old mobile home thumped and rumbled. Without it to power the air-conditioning, the tin box of a house trailer would have been unlivable in summer, and of course there would be no music from the radio. The trailer was just about the worst place he'd ever crashed. The homestead's one good feature was a deep well, tapping pure water.

Otherwise, the dump was like a weekend cottage in an unpleasant corner of hell. But one where heavenly music could be heard. Carl hummed along, conducting the scherzo of the Second Movement with long, nervous, nicotine-stained fingers. Marvelous, the way the frenetic notes found their way into unison and harmony.

He closed his eyes and hummed through his nose. And then the grumble of car tires on desert soil distracted him. He opened his eyes and saw light in the window—headlights, from a car that had turned off the highway. The vehicle stopped on the sandy expanse—you couldn't really call it a yard—between the trailer and the pavement. The lights went out. He heard a car door open and close.

Too late to turn off the radio—whoever was there must have heard the music by now, because he had it cranked loud. But he turned it very low, resenting the intrusion. He reached over to the table beside his chair and grasped the hilt of a Ruger SP101 revolver. Chambered for .357 magnum cartridges, it would stop anything up to a bison.

He waited in the dark, cradling the revolver. For a long time, nothing—just the weirdly electronic-sounding shrieks of burrowing owls and the distant laments of coyotes. The car lights flared, the engine started, and the vehicle evidently U-turned away, rolling off into the night.

Maybe it had been somebody just looking for a place to turn.

Maybe not.

The second movement ended and the third began, stately adagio sounding meditative. The fourth, the fifth. The announcer said something in Italian. Then a different voice, a woman's, and the music began again. Bach this time, Brandenburg 5, twenty-odd minutes of strings, harpsichord, and flute, delicate as an ancient china teacup so thin it was translucent.

Then a program of Mozart, first the great 40th Symphony, followed by lesser pieces—Carl shifted in his chair. If he'd programmed the presentation, the music would have built.

The night crawled by to classical accompaniment. Two hours and more. Despite the music—Handel now—Carl's head nodded. At a point halfway through the Water Music suite, when the horns emerge to take the momentum from the strings, he thought he heard something—maybe a frightened night bird squawking, then a rush of wings as it flew into the night.

The radio suddenly cut out. The whine of the air conditioner trailed off.

Sweat crawled down Carl's face. The generator had shut off, probably out of fuel. The room still held cool air, but he was sweating as if he'd run a mile in desert heat. Carl focused everything on his hearing, straining his ears, closing his eyes, concentrating. He heard silence.

Then Carl heard something else—the doorknob turning right, left, right, grating. Sand always blew into the socket. The door was locked and dead-bolted. Fully awake again, Carl raised the pistol.

And waited.

When it came, it was the last thing he expected: "Carl? Let me in."

 _No. It couldn't be._ He hadn't heard that voice for twenty years. And yet—

"Who is it?" he called, harshly.

"It's me. Trish."

Carl got up very quietly and padded barefoot to the door. He released the handle lock, turned the key of the deadbolt. They made no sound. He kept them oiled. He backed away just as silently until he stood beside the chair where he had been sitting. "It's open."

He quickly, quietly, moved to the other side of the room. He heard the front door open. Saw against the rectangle of starry night the silhouette of a thin woman. "Carl?"

"Sue? I heard you were crazy, babe."

"I've always been crazy. Don't turn on the lights." He heard the door shut quietly. "I don't want you to see me like this."

"What's wrong with you?"

"Got old, babe."

He snorted. "You're not more than forty-one. I got twenty years on you."

"So how are you, Carl?"

His laughter carried no happiness. "You see where I'm living."

"Times are tough all over. What did you do with it, Carl?"

"Do with what?"

"You know."

"No, I don't. What the hell are you talking about, Sue?"

"The thing you gave Larry. The thing that sent the snakes to trap me."

"You're trippin', Sue."

"I know you did it." Pause. "Larry's dead, you know?"

"Yeah, I heard. Tough break, kid."

"So—where is it now? The summoner of darkness?"

"Search me, babe," he said, feeling bored now. Her voice was harsh and raspy. No doubt if he could turn on the light he'd see a caricature of the lovely girl she had been. Forty, maybe but a bad forty, a hard forty, a forty that might look sixty or seventy. No percentage in that.

"You don't know where it is now?"

"Babes, believe me, I don't know. I won it off a guy in Argentina. Larry bought it off me. Sorry, babes, but he said you were givin' him static, he needed to take you in line. I'm not responsible if it screwed your head up."

"You're a fool."

He stood beside a bookcase stuffed with volumes about music. On top of it—yes, his left hand closed on the shaft of a tactical flashlight, one he'd used before when he had to go out into the desert night to fix some damn thing that had gone wrong, to shoot a coyote, or to refuel the generator. He turned the flashlight until his thumb found the switch, but he did not yet turn it on.

"Fool, am I?" he said genially. "Maybe, maybe, but this is my place and you are trespassing, girl, so you will get your ass out of my trailer, and I mean right now."

"You're holding a gun."

"I am, babes, and I'll use it on you if you make me."

"You wouldn't hit anything in the dark."

"That," he said, "can be remedied. He thumbed the flashlight switch, and the beam hit her full in the face—

And, sweet Lord in Heaven—

The woman he saw was _dead_ , her mouth hanging open, her glazed eyes vacant.

And though a .357 magnum is very powerful, as Carl Debbinzer found out that evening, it cannot stop everything.

Though Susan Flowers, or what was left of her, stopped him.

Dead.


	6. Chapter 6

**6: Bought with Blood**

* * *

 **(May 5, 2015)**

The beast, not human, not wolf, but a two-legged cross between both, leaped on Wendy before she could turn, slamming into her, knocking her off the log. She heard the sharp teeth click maybe an inch from her throat. Claws raked against her as she toppled.

Her reflexes let her make a half-spin as she fell, and she bent her knees, got her boots against the thing's gut, and shoulder-rolled as she kicked, using the monster's own momentum to throw it hard against a tree trunk.

She was on her feet in a heartbeat, axe cocked and ready. "Come and get it, sucker!" she yelled.

She heard a suggestion of an evil, low, liquid laugh. "You can't hurt me."

Wendy brandished the axe as if it were Grunkle Stan's Louisville Slugger. "Yeah? I'll ask the pieces after I finish with you!"

The inhuman thing—as well as she could see in the dark, it stood shorter than she, maybe five and a half feet, but far bulkier in shoulder and much thicker of neck—threw its misshapen head back and howled.

And from the forest, more howls answered, uncomfortably close. Wendy backed, found the fallen trunk, and stepped on it. As she had guessed he would, the creature called Freiki charged again, dropping to all fours to gain speed and then catapulting toward her.

She leaped aside as she swirled the axe in a circle over her head, sweeping it to chunk against his right shoulder. It bit deep and the creature screamed, yelping like a wounded dog, as it fell and scrabbled in the detritus of the forest floor.

But by then Wendy was running full-tilt, dodging between the pine trunks. She heard him, or another one of them, coming on hard, stopped with her back to a tree, and as the beast rushed past, she struck again, drawing a human-like scream.

"Can't hurt you, remember?" she taunted, already running as the creature staggered, holding its chest.

"Wendy!" Ford's voice. "To me! To me!"

She saw him and veered to join him, bursting through springy undergrowth and into the open. He grabbed her arm, but she shook him off. "Need two for the axe!"

Now the sounds of hot pursuit clamored louder, closer—some of them were baying almost like hounds, others ran in ghastly silence. The werewolves erupted from the forest edge. "There!" Ford yelled. "Inside!"

Wendy glimpsed it then, a ghostly disk of pale blue light, like a spotlight made of moonbeams, the place where Ford had sprayed his scent masker, where he had traced a circle in the grass. She ran, limping.

Something snapped at her foot, and she felt teeth close on her bootheel. A backward smash of the axe discouraged that attacker. Then she and Ford had stumbled inside the weird illuminated circle, twenty feet or so across—

And the wolves and half-humans drew up short, screeching.

"They can't cross the perimeter," Ford panted.

She counted six of them, four wolves, two wolfmen—wolfwomen? She couldn't tell. They milled at the edge of the circle, snarling and growling.

Ford raised a powerful flashlight beside his eyes and shone it on their attackers. Wolf eyes reflected like green embers. One of the wolfmen's eyes burned like orange coals. The creatures cringed and fell back from the light.

And then another limped out of the woods, a blood-streaked gray one. "I will eat her heart!" it rumbled, the voice revealing it to be Freiki. In the circle of light from Ford's flashlight, red, still-oozing blood from wounds on its shoulder and ribcage matted its fur.

"I don't think your master will let you," Ford yelled.

The shambling creature drew up short. "What? Another human? Or a ghost? It has no scent!"

"You others!" Wendy yelled, "We have no fight with you! Freiki has injured our friend! We help our friends! It's the Law of the Pack!"

The six drew back a little. One whimpered.

Freiki snarled and threw himself forward. At the very edge of the circle, power crackled in bright blue-white lightning bolts, seizing him like the legs of a grotesque electric spider closing on prey. He jolted, howled, and reeled backward, falling and pushing himself up again, staggering, lurching, and obviously disoriented.

"Ulva!" Ford shouted. "Are you among these?"

"She—she is as good as _dead_!" Freiki roared hoarsely, bracing himself against a tree.

"Ulva! If you hear us, we offer you sanctuary!" Ford shouted over his voice. "Come to us! We mean you no harm. The rest of you—get back, now! Run! Fair warning!"

Two of the wolves seemed to understand and slunk away into the forest. The two wolfpeople came to stand flanking Freiki, though they did not touch the leader of their pack. The remaining two wolves, cowering, tails tucked, fell back slowly, growling.

"Wendy," Ford said in almost a whisper, "close your eyes."

She did.

Ford yelled again: "You were warned. This is Freiki's fault!"

Even with her eyes closed, Wendy could see—could _almost_ see a red world, through the membrane of her eyelids, as an unimaginably brilliant light flared for a split second—and she heard the terrified yelps of the werewolves as they fled, seemingly panicked and blinded, for she heard them scramble and blunder against trees.

Ford had hold of her left wrist and half-dragged her. "Run!"

They left the protective circle, made it to Ford's car—he ripped open the driver's door and pushed her in and across the seat before climbing in himself and slamming the door. Of their besiegers only Freiki remained, and he came in a shambling, staggering run, obviously injured but anger-fueled. "I regret this," Ford said.

The driver's-side car window was down. Ford raised his arm, aimed some weapon—

Freiki was throwing himself at the car—

Wendy winced at the _boom!_ The whole car reverberated as an orange flame licked into the night. Five feet away, Freiki dropped to the ground, rolling and screaming, as Ford started the engine, backed and spun like a stunt driver, and roared away, leaving behind a hanging cloud of dust.

"Did you kill him?" Wendy asked.

"I doubt it."

Wendy felt her leg. It was wet and sticky, and the denim felt torn. "What kind of gun was that?"

"Oh, it's a McGucket special. A three-shot revolver—"

" _Three_?"

"Yes, chambering twelve-gauge shotgun shells. These are loaded with pellets of pure silver. They scatter, so lethal distance is only a couple of dozen feet, usually. The gun also has, please pardon me, one hell of a kick. Anyway, this is small shot, number three birdshot, so while he's probably not going to die from the wound, I expect he's chewed up painfully. Are you all right? No bites?"

"No, he tried, but the oil and silver must've stopped him. My jeans are ripped bad, and he might've clawed me. Is that dangerous?"

"Claw wounds? That depends. Have you had a tetanus shot recently?"

"Nope."

"Then," Ford said, "we'll stop at the clinic and get the duty nurse to give you one. Then to the Gleeful house."

"Why there?" Wendy asked.

"To begin with, you have some of the creature's blood on your axe. Not much, but not much is needed. But then, too—there's Ulva. If she heard, if she wants to seek sanctuary—that's where she'll come."

"She'd have better luck at the Shack!"

"We'll try to explain that to her," Ford said as he turned toward the clinic. "If she gets to us. If she's still alive."

* * *

 _Moonrise. The outskirts of Reno, NV._

The false priest sat slumped at the desk of his motel room. He had been able to see through the corpse's eyes, to speak through its mouth, hear through its ears, but now—now his worn spirit had crept back into his own mind, and he hurt, he ached, he carried the muscle-memory of the woman's painful false life in every limb.

And he had lost blood. The pint or so he had loosed from his veins had activated the reanimation spell and had allowed him to move his flesh puppet, to inhabit it. He had thought himself safe enough here in the motel room, a hundred miles away from the isolated hiding place of Carl Debbinzer.

And he had been almost correct in his thinking. When the woman's body had finished its grisly work and had begun to fall apart, riddled with bullets and no longer held together by the spell, his last conscious act while animating the body was to turn on the two burners on the propane stove. And in a back bedroom—to light and leave a candle burning. Then he let go his grip, and a second death took the body as his spirit fought free of its dissolution.

It was a near escape, but his mind had not been caught in the undertow of her corpse's failing. It had crossed the distance with the speed of light, but then had crept back into his own body with agonizing slowness. He felt long before he could move.

He had been bent forward in his chair, arms and head resting on the desk. His face peeled up from the wood. In the reading light, he saw he had lost more blood—it had seeped through the bandages on his left arm, had spread in a pool that was already drying, that gave forth the unpleasant odor of coagulating blood, metallic but with a sick, sweet undertone, a fudgy smell like candy cooked in hell.

This blood loss had not been too major. Spilled blood always looks like a larger volume than it really is—a few ounces, but on top of his recent sacrifices, it left him weak.

He pushed up, walked to the bathroom on rubbery legs, and dug out bandages and cotton wool. He had to cut through the old bandage with a pair of medical shears—the gift of a now-dead doctor in Yuba City, California, an elderly man who had such a naïve faith in human nature that he stopped one night to pick up a hitchhiker on a lonely stretch of Browns Valley Road.

He had been so kind that he had willingly—true, while in a mental daze and not under his own control—driven the passenger into Nevada and, with the car pulled off in the shelter of a tumble of scree, had obligingly walked half a mile into the desert and had dug his own grave.

The false priest had driven the car to the outskirts of Reno, had carefully wiped down all surfaces so he left no fingerprints—although his were on file with no police agency anywhere—and had left the windows of the car open, the key in the ignition. It would be only a matter of time before some opportunistic thief stole it.

Then the false priest carried a suitcase with medical supplies and drugs packed inside. The late doctor no longer needed them.

Anyway, in the motel bathroom he used the medical shears to cut off the blood-soaked bandage on his left arm. The puncture wound still oozed blood. He splashed disinfectant on, wincing at the burn, and then with wide adhesive tape tightly bound a gauze pad, folded and re-folded, against the wound.

He drank glass after glass of water. He knew he would have to rest for days now. Such a major magic took much of his energy, and he would have to rebuild it.

No matter. He had money enough, and the motel was not an expensive one. Eating places clustered nearby. A pharmacy was within walking distance if he needed to replenish bandages or alcohol.

Despite his bone-deep feeling of exhaustion, he carefully mopped up and scrubbed away the spilled blood. The housekeeper did not need to see that. He had no wish to waste more of his blood on possessing flunkeys.

He lay back on the bed and let his mind reach out.

What he found nearly brought him to his feet in a blind rage.

He had thought he had arranged the enslavement of the Pentagram very neatly. The beast-creature, the were-creature, Freiki, was easy to bend to his will. Now, infuriatingly, Freiki's mind clouded red with pain. Something had fought against him. What? He had an impression of _silver_. Who would know that? What human would even suspect the existence of the carefully elusive pack of werewolves? And the other sensation, what was it? Coldness? The Ice? Could his targets and his foes even be aware of his movements?

No, impossible. They were not even together in one place. There _had_ to be ten of them, he knew—but he could account so far for no more than five, perhaps six. Two were so nearly identical he could not be sure if he was reading one or two psychic signatures. Anyway, he could not yet locate them. No matter, for he had time. They could pose no threat unless they all ten gathered together, with knowledge that he doubted any living man had in this scientific age. Then, too, to have any hope against him, they would have to know of him and be united against him—and they still seemed scattered.

And—yes, he knew it well—though if they gathered, they _could_ be a threat, until they _had_ gathered, he could not rob them of power. He had hoped to turn one of them at least, more preferably a third of them—bend the three most vulnerable among them to darkness. He knew the Good. The untouched would foolishly try to help if he corrupted a few of their number. They would foolishly gather then.

But if three of their number secretly worked for him, they would all be doomed.

They would be his.

* * *

Wendy's left jeans leg had been ripped from the bottom of the side pocket to halfway down her calf. Four bloody lines scored her flesh—not deep, not requiring stitches, but dark red and angry-looking against her pale skin, and they had bled enough to stiffen the denim of her ruined jeans. Nurse Everett, a no-nonsense, heavyset woman who had lived in Gravity Falls for most of her life, took the news that Wendy had been raked by a werewolf's claws right in stride. She had Wendy strip off the bloody jeans. On an examining table, the redheaded girl lay on her right side, a folded sheet draped over her hips for modesty, while the nurse-practitioner poured cold hydrogen peroxide solution over the claw-gashes. They boiled pink.

Then came a gentle cleansing, then reddish-brown Betadine, burning. Finally, a series of four-inch gauze pads, bound against the pads with a self-adhesive stretchy bandage. And after all that, the quick sharp bite of the hypodermic needle with the tetanus toxoid shot.

Ford had driven over to the Shack for spare clothes. Nurse Everett brought them back to the examination room and helped Wendy get into them without snagging the bandage. "That should do it, as far as normal germs go," she told Wendy. "As for the other—"

"Dr. Pines has that covered," Wendy said.

Ford had explained as they were driving in: "I'll take your axe and get a few drops of blood from it. With half of that, I'll make a vaccine for Gideon, and the other half is for you."

"But he didn't _bite_ me," she said. "He tried, but he couldn't get close enough with his teeth."

"All the same, we'll call it a preventive measure. It won't harm you if you're not infected, and just in case you are, it will stop the infection cold. I'll need a few drops of your own blood, too, and of Gideon's. I'll work all night and it should be ready tomorrow. Stan has agreed to stake out the Gleeful house."

"You think they'll attack him?" she asked.

Ford shook his head gravely. "No. But truthfully, I'm worried about Ulva. If she comes seeking help, they may be bold enough to try to track her and kill her."

"But Stan doesn't have your smarts," she said.

Ford smiled. "He has brass knuckles," he told her reassuringly. Then he paused and adjusted his spectacles. "More accurately—he has _silver_ knuckles."


	7. Chapter 7

**7: Manning Up**

* * *

 **(May 6, 2015)**

On Thursday morning—both Wendy and Gideon had a doctor's permission slip to miss school that day—Ford and Wendy went over to the Gleeful house around eight-thirty. "How's your leg?" Ford asked as Wendy got out of the car.

"It'll be OK. Stings and itches some, but the scratches weren't all that deep. There's Stan!"

Stan wasn't in the Stanleymobile, but in a nondescript, rather battered sedan. He got out and stretched. "Hiya," he said as the other two came up. "So, you got the—" he wriggled his fingers—" _magic potion_ ready?"

"It's a serum and not a potion, but I do have it, of course," Ford said. "Fortunately, Wendy and Gideon have the same blood type, which simplifies matters. I also took DNA swabs from inside their cheeks, so the two doses are fine-tuned to their genetic make-up." He yawned. "Forgive me. I was awake all night, preparing the mixtures."

"My heart bleeds for you," Stan snarked. "Me, I been sittin' here all crammed comfortable-like in a used wreck from the Gleeful Auto Sales lot with nothin' to do but count all the beautiful stars. No werewolves, by the way."

"I really didn't expect them last night," Ford said. "They didn't anticipate the odds would turn against them the way they did. Wendy did an admirable job, Stanley."

"'Course she did," grinned Stan, and he gave Wendy a wink. "Man, if I could have met this redhead when I was twenty-five and she was fifteen, she'd be a top-notch con artist by now!"

"Oh, dude, you flatter me," Wendy said.

"I'm not joking," Ford insisted.

Stan guffawed. "Neither am I, Poindexter! So tell me about _your_ evening."

"At one point we were all but surrounded by werewolves, and Wendy said just the right thing at the right moment."

"Huh?" Wendy asked, taken by surprise.

"You told them that to help a friend was the Law of our Pack," Ford said, his voice providing the capital letters. "If there's one way to gain a wolf's respect—it's that!"

"Yeah, wolves have a real peckin' order, sorta like politicians. That was smart thinkin'," Stan said.

Wendy shrugged. "Eh, it just popped into my head. Let's go get this jab thing done, OK?"

Gideon was plumped on a cushion in the floor of the living room, playing a first-person shooter game on his Waystation 4, when Mrs. Gleeful let them in. "Gonna fix ya up, kid," Stanley said in his boisterous tone. "Get yourself ready."

"Do I have to take it with water?" Gideon asked, pausing his game and standing up. Wendy couldn't help thinking that, slimmed down and taller and without the crazy bouffant hair, he didn't look half bad—except for the family feature, that piggy snub nose—at thirteen.

"Guess again," Stan said as Ford opened a small leather case and took out a disposable medical syringe.

"Not a shot!" Gideon said, turning pale. "I—I got a phobia about shots!"

Bud Gleeful said solicitously, "My little boy's right. He's never had but one."

"Not even immunizations?" Ford asked, sounding shocked.

"Well—we sort of fibbed and claimed a religious objection," Bud admitted.

Ford shook his head. "I'm sorry, but in this case there is no alternative. This has to be administered by injection." He had taken a brown glass vial, its label bearing Gideon's name, from the case and punctured its cap. He drew into the syringe 1.5 cc of a liquid about the amber color of apple juice. "This is a very thin needle—23 gauge. It won't hurt very much."

"But I'm so _sensitive_!" Gideon complained, backing away.

"Oh, dude, do me first," Wendy told Ford, plopping herself down on the sofa and hitching her green flannel shirt down off her left arm. "Gideon, if a girl can stand it, you can!"

"Very well," Ford said. He capped the needle, took out a second vial with Wendy's name written on its label, and loaded a second syringe with a dose from that one. "I have to do this," he explained, "because I prepared two sera, one specific to Wendy and one to you, Gideon." He tore open a couple of packages of alcohol swabs, pushed up the short sleeve of Wendy's tee shirt, and cleaned an area high on her bicep. "Just relax your arm. This is intramuscular. Now, this will sting a little, and for a couple of days the area may ache a little bit."

He jabbed the needle in and pushed the plunger. Wendy didn't flinch and even looked down curiously as the needle pierced her skin. "Hardly feel anything," Wendy said cheerfully. "Come on, Gideon. Man up!"

Ford pulled the needle free, capped it, and applied an adhesive bandage to a small ruby-red drop of blood on Wendy's arm.

Gideon looked as if he were about to cry. "Do I _have_ to?"

"It'll cure your lycanthropy," Ford said. "You'll probably feel a little odd with the next full moon, but you _won't_ transform into a wolf boy. And after that, you should be free of symptoms, even during full moons."

"But it'll _hurt_!" Gideon said.

Stanley sighed. "Kid, lemme tell ya something. Things in life are gonna hurt you from time to time. One little stick from a needle? Nothin! Turnin' into a werewolf once a month? Major pain in the tuchus! Sure, a shot hurts a little bit. But a man takes it and don't complain. You got another needle, Ford?"

"Yes, one spare—"

"Got some saline or somethin?"

Ford blinked. "Well—yes, a standard solution—"

"Give _me_ a shot," Stan said. "Gideon, come here. Stand right there. No, right next to me. You watch real close. I want you to see how a man takes a shot."

Shrugging, Ford had Stan take off his jacket and roll up his sleeve. He jabbed Stan's arm and gave him 1.5 cc of the harmless saline. "See?" Stan asked as Ford bandaged the site. "I didn't even bat an eye. Wendy's right—needle's so little, you barely even feel it. Just a little sting right at the first."

"I—I just don't think I can," Gideon whimpered.

Looking out of patience, as well as sleep-deprived and irritable, Stan snapped, "Kid, mazel tov! For today you become a man." Without warning, he grabbed Gideon, lifted him up, and bent him across his knee. He jerked down the boy's jeans and shorts, leaving half his butt exposed.

An astonished Gideon bellowed, "WHAAA!"

He was so immobilized by surprise that he didn't seem to notice when Ford plunged in the needle and pushed the plunger. A second later, Ford said, "It's done." He slapped on a bandage, and Stan let Gideon down.

"You went too far, old man!" Gideon shouted, hitching up his pants as he did a frantic little jig. "You done _humiliated_ me!"

"Gideon," Wendy said, a wicked smile on her lips, "you got kinda a nice butt."

Gideon spluttered, "I will never, ever forgive you—what? What was that? Oh, thank you, Wendy!"

Wendy grinned. "Yeah, only don't let it go to your head."

That cooled Gideon's anger, though he still grumbled, "I ought to sue Stanley for—OK, OK, I guess y'all made your point." Gideon sighed and rolled up his sleeve. "Here's my arm. Give me the shot."

"You must not have heard me," Ford said. "You've already had it. I just injected you."

All up and down the block people who happened to be at home jerked around as from the Gleeful house there came a great cry of "YEEEEOOOOWTCH!"

* * *

Afterward, Wendy went back to the Shack and back to work. Tourist season was in full swing, and she worked like a dog until six PM, wishing that Dipper and Mabel were back to share the load—and that T.K. O'Grady, Mabel's boyfriend, was back on duty as the short-order cook. Not that Abuelita didn't stand in well for him (though it's true her burgers and dogs tended toward the spicy side of the food spectrum), but Wendy had to do double duty at the cash register, taking money not only for souvenirs and—face it—assorted tourist junk but also for the food sales, from eleven in the morning until two in the afternoon.

What with that, and restocking the shelves as the merch got low, and cleaning up barf from kids who'd eaten too much candy on the bus ride in, and unstopping the occasional toilet, and what have you, Wendy emerged at six truly tired. Melody would have helped, but she had recently given birth to Harmony Rose Ramirez, her and Soos's second child and first daughter, and what with the baby and Little Soos, she had her hands full.

 _Tough it out,_ Wendy told herself. _One more month, and Dip and Mabes will be back and then things will be all right again._

Exhausted though she felt, she couldn't miss her night classes at the community college—this was the final exam evening. She drove over, finished the two-hour history exam in forty minutes (it was almost a joke, a hundred multiple-choice questions, half of them verbatim from the mid-term) and wrote her summative essay for her English class (a cinch—she had picked up a lot of writing skills from Dipper via mind-meld and could even have exempted the exam, except she chose not to).

She also turned in her class list for the fall pre-registration. Since she would be taking only a couple of high-school classes to qualify for graduation then, she planned to take three college classes, not two. That would bring her total number of semester hours—assuming she passed, of course—up to twenty-one, just nine shy of a full year. With luck, she could take three more courses next spring and have her whole freshman year of college under her belt by the time Dipper was ready to begin as a freshman.

She could have snared even more hours if she'd taken summer classes—but on the other hand, no way she'd take summer classes, man! Not with her very own dork and her gal pal Mabel in town! A girl had to hang with her homies, didn't she?

She drove back to the Shack at a little past ten PM, secure in the knowledge that she had aced the history final and very likely would have a 97-plus average in English. Humming, she parked her Dodge Dart and started across the lot, the gravel crunching under her boot soles.

Something—she thought at first it must be a hurt kitten—whimpered in the shadows off to the side. She heard Widdles and Waddles grunting uneasily in their sty, a little way off, out of nose-shot of the Shack.

Wishing she had her axe, Wendy said, "Go away!"

"Please." It came from the darkness, a voice soft and sad with hopelessness.

The girl came limping out of the shadows. "I walked so long way. I keep them from finding me."

When she emerged into the mellow glow of the porch light, Wendy caught her breath. It was a girl, very thin, her face not ugly, not pretty, but drawn into a miserable expression. Dirty, lank light-brown hair, streaked with gray and tangled with twigs and matted with clumps of mud, hung down as far as her shoulders. She wore a thin faded lavender dress, the hem frayed, the cloth soiled, the garment too small for her. Her bare legs were eloquent of hard running, striped with blood from thorns. At first Wendy thought she was wearing shapeless brown shoes, but then realized her feet were bare, shod only with mud.

"Ulva?" Wendy asked.

"I—I want join your Pack," the girl pleaded. "Will be good. I never bit person. Only—only protect from Freiki!"

Wendy unlocked and opened the door. "Come inside."

When she did, timidly, and when Melody and Abuelita came to help, they learned that the thin cotton dress was her only garment. Nothing under it.

"You poor little thing," Melody said, sniffling.

"Where you got your dress?" Abuelita asked, stroking the girl's hair, gently untangling the twigs.

Haltingly, Ulva confessed that she had found it in the town dump, and she was afraid they would punish her for taking it. "No, no, child," Abuelita said.

Wendy got one of her red flannel shirts. It ate the little girl whole, hanging almost to her ankles, and she had to roll the sleeves up so her hands wouldn't be tangled in them. She was famished. Abuelita got out hamburger patties and fried them, but the girl begged her, "Not too burnt—I get sick."

As soon as they were cool enough, she ate three of them pink and rare, no buns, just the meat, holding the patties in her hands, gobbling them, licking her fingers. And she looked ashamed. "I—I only ever eat as wolf," she explained, staring down at the floor, her cheeks a dull red.

"Is all right," Abuelita said. "You will learn."

Abuelita, who had lots of practice with granddaughters down in Mexico, bathed Ulva and put her to bed in the guest room. "You sleep here," she said kindly. "My big grandson, he let no evil thing into this place!" And outside the door, she said some quick prayers, asking for even greater protection than Soos could give.

Wendy got off the phone. "Just talked to Dr. Pines," she told Soos and Melody. "Woke him up—he missed sleep last night. He says one of us should stay on watch. Tell you what—I'll take the first two hours, but I just gotta grab me some sleep before high school tomorrow morning. Can somebody relieve me at midnight?"

"I'll do it, girl dude," Soos said.

"You cannot fight the _hombre-lobo_ ," Abuelita objected from the hall doorway. "You do not know how."

Soos threw back his shoulders. "Abuelita, I'll just fight them the best ways I know," he promised. "And if they, like, swarm in, I'll make so much noise that everybody can come and help! I'll raise a ruckus! It's time for Soos to man up!"

Abuelita's face shone with pride. "That's my big boy who speaks now! Very well, I give you the silver dagger that was your grandfather's. It will keep them off."

"Heh," Soos said. "'Ruckus' is really a strange word, dawgs!"

Wendy punched his arm. "Thanks, man. Ford will be over early tomorrow morning, about seven o'clock, to put up wards that should keep the werewolves away—if Ulva can stand them."

"Do you trust her, Wendy?" Melody asked quietly. "I mean—you know—we have babies."

Wendy thought for a minute. "I've been fooled by people before," she admitted, "but I don't believe Ulva's one of them. She needs us as much as we need her right now—her pack has thrown her out. She needs to belong, needs a new one. I think she'll bond with us, and then—well, Melody, if anybody should mess with one of your kids, they'd have to put up a damn hard fight to keep Ulva from ripping their guts out!"

Before going on watch duty, Wendy looked in on Ulva and in the darkened room, she saw a little mound on the floor. Wendy flicked the light on and off. The exhausted girl had stripped off her human clothes and lay curled up naked on the throw rug, deep in an exhausted sleep.

Wendy gently covered her with a blanket, then locked her in. She patrolled around and around the Mystery Shack for two hours, her axe in hand.

Nothing threatened, and the pigs remained quiet except for contented grunting now and then.

Soos relieved her right at midnight. She got ready for bed, but instead of going up to the attic, where she had been using Dipper's room, she went down to the guest room and took the queen-sized bed.

At the foot of it, curled up on the rug like a puppy, Ulva peacefully slept out the night.


	8. Chapter 8

**Curse of the Wolf Boy**

* * *

 **8: Into the Wild**

After a day spent hiding in a thicket, partially healing, Freiki emerged with the coming of the next night. The injured werewolf limped, bleeding, raging, traveling along a stream-course deep into the obscurity beneath the forest trees.

He could have changed to full human form—only at times of full moon did he have to take his monstrous half-wolf, half-man shape—but he knew that as a human he would be weaker, and the pain would gnaw at him more. So, bent and clutching his wounded side, he pushed through the brush as a monster, and weaker animals that caught his scent fled in terror. Once he threw himself face-down by a fast-flowing creek and drank deeply.

Already his more-than-human muscles were knitting together, broken bones were starting to heal, but the process would take weeks. In the heat of fury, he did not want to wait that long for revenge.

He was making his way home. When he was nearly at his journey's end, Ondawa, a humanoid werewolf almost as old as he, melted from the underbrush, Changed as she walked toward him, and in semi-wolf shape she approached submissively, her attitude begging, "Let me help you."

He broke her neck with one raging swipe of his paw, then tore out her throat.

 _Let that be a lesson_ — _help when help is_ _NEEDED_ _, or suffer when you offer it too late!_

The night before, Ondawa had fled when the terrible light burst out, driven by instinctive fear of blazing fire, of blinding light. He had stood his ground—she had deserted him. Breathing hard, he left the mutilated body. Contrary to Hollywood, it would not change back to human form. If some woodsman discovered it, the body would be one more anomaly, like so many others in the uncanny valley.

But it would mean much, much more to any werewolf who saw it. Ondawa's death had a grim significance that only Freiki and his kind knew, unless the lore had been penned in ancient books by humans who dared to trace the tedious ways of forbidden arts and to study matters dark and dangerous.

First, you must know that werewolves are long-lived, though not immortal. A strong werewolf may have a life expectancy of a hundred and fifty years, perhaps more, but Time will eventually slow and gray even a very careful werewolf, and sheer age and weakness will defeat him or her at last. However, in the ordinary course of things, a werewolf in the prime of life—as were Ondawa and Freiki—was very close to unkillable, except in peculiar circumstances.

For example, any werewolf killed by a human—or at least one very _nearly_ killed, for losing one's heart or suffering beheading is a sure roadblock to recovery—can regenerate over the painful course of weeks or months. Lost limbs can even be regrown, at cost of great pain.

But this does not hold true for a werewolf killed by one of his or her own kind. For reasons no human can fathom, that way of death, for a werewolf, is a very final thing. Werewolf blood spilled by another werewolf _can_ kill, and kill permanently. No one knows just why this is true. It may be Nature's way of . . . limiting an extremely dangerous species.

Still enraged even after his kill, Freiki struck out half-blindly at everything—trees, a deer too terrified to avoid him. He howled, despising the pain in the two deep bites taken by the axe—forged of both iron _and_ silver, the two hateful elements!—and the deep throb of ache in the scatter of small-shot pits sprayed across the top right quarter of his chest.

Some of the shot still lodged deep in his tissue. It would have to be cut out, or sucked out, before the open wounds would close and heal. He could order the Pack to do that task for him. One of them had been a human nurse in former life. She would do—though she almost never took full human form these days, he could force her to do so and to tend his injuries.

His whole upper chest and shoulder burned in agony. Had the human's aim with the firearm been lower and to the left, and had just one of those small pellets pierced his heart . . .

No regeneration for a werewolf whose heart had been torn open by silver, either. Death by silver is final.

Or, come to that, death by cold iron.

A stab or slash to the heart, or decapitation with a sliver-iron edge—that would do it.

Freiki had escaped that fate, but it would take dreary weeks, even months, for the wounds in his flesh to heal and scar over. He would not change to human guise in that time—transforming demanded too much energy, energy required for re-growing muscle and bone. Curse the humans! Curse the whelp Ulva—he would track her down, or have the others track her and drag her to him, and he would kill her, kill her, kill her before the eyes of the rest of the Pack, for no whip bites as fiercely as terror does to make the underlings loyal—

He found another shallow, rock-bedded stream, recognized it, and waded against the current, knowing now where he was, knowing now where his goal lay.

Far up Gravity Falls Valley was a place where a good many square miles of livable land topped a high plateau, the summit a hundred feet below the tops of the bluffs and nearly as far as that above the valley floor.

 _Ilahee Leelu_ , the Old People had once called that six square miles of inaccessible forest: "Kingdom of the Wolf." Trees grew ancient and thick there, unharvested for eons, never touched by axe or saw. The bluffs that walled in the northeastern side of the plateau offered the shelter of three sizable caverns. Two streams irrigated the plateau before tumbling over the edge in steep white-spray waterfalls. No humans had explored that land—not for two centuries, anyway.

The Native Americans of long ago had discovered the place and named it, and the werewolves of old, from the same tribe that had named the land, had claimed the plateau as their sanctuary and citadel.

And they had held the land for many hundreds of years. A special breed of wolves lived there, those capable of shape-shifting—those who began as human and either changed from form to form at will or under the overwhelming force of a full moon or, more rarely, took the four-legged wolf form permanently, unless forced to resume human shape. Oh, not many lived there—never more than a few dozen. And they descended to the Valley floor to hunt.

Freiki had ruled them for six cycles of seasons, ruled them by force of being the strongest, the most unforgiving, the unopposable Pack leader. He had chafed under the Rules inherited from former Pack leaders:

 _We are hunters and masters of the night. But you must not hunt Man. Interlopers who stray into Ilahee Leelu are fair game, but bite none in the Valley._

 _We are hunters and defenders of our land. If you do bite an interloping human, either kill it or keep it prisoner until the Moon calls the Great Change forth. Then it will willingly join us._

 _We are hunters and we each know our place. Make a new-turned human the least of the Pack._

 _We are hunters and we protect our own. Nurture your young. A baby born to a werewolf couple, which will be human in form, must be bitten before its third birthday, to ensure the Great Change and a proper upbringing as a werewolf. Draw blood, but bite it tenderly, not savagely._

 _We are hunters and loyal to our own. Never hunt or kill your own kind. Never._

 _We are hunters and hunters must have a Leader. Fight another of your own kind only if challenging dominance. If you lose, never challenge again, on pain of expulsion from the Pack and from Ilahee Leelu forever._

 _We are hunters and we follow our Leader. Obey the Leader, except do not violate the taboos._

"Never kill your own kind." That had been the first Rule that Freiki had violated, slaughtering the old leader, Ulhu. In a normal combat for dominance, the winning werewolf would permit the other to cringe, belly brushing the ground, and back away, slipping back to second or third in importance among the Pack.

But when the defeated Ulhu tried to show submission, Freiki killed him—in sight of the rest of the Pack. None of them had objected.

None had dared.

They had obeyed, even when their loyalty had been strained by circumstance. Freiki clearly recalled the Time of Strangeness, that summer when for a length of time unknown the sky had turned orange and alien creatures had flown and circled near the plateau, so bizarre that even he had felt fear and the Pack had gone into hiding—but that time had passed. Not once did even the bravest in the Pack question Freiki's orders not to fight, but to hide.

Since then, though, sensing that somehow the human rule over the Valley had been almost successfully threatened, he had felt a growing impulse to extend his reach as Leader. And a fury that the rest of the Pack hesitated to follow him unquestioningly. He knew that with their obedience, he could turn more humans, until he peopled the Valley with monsters. And then—

His reach might stretch far.

As he neared the craggy vertical slope up to the plateau, Freiki seethed. With his injuries, he could not himself track Ulva, either in his werewolf form or in his human form (truth to tell, he had only four times taken his full human form since becoming Leader). The pain distracted him.

And, it seemed to him, the others in the Pack were reluctant to find the traitor. He had held in his hot anger when one had reminded him, "She is only a child." Let another of his Pack have the insolence to say that—and there would be one more example to the others, one more dead.

He reached the spot and found the only approach to the sanctuary at the top of the plateau. Grinding his teeth, Freiki climbed, slowly and painfully, the one manageable route to the top of the plateau. It had once been a waterfall, but the stream had changed course eons ago, and now a creature sure of foot and sharp of claw could find holds here and there and could chimney up the ancient water-worn scar in the cliff to reach Ilahee Leelu.

The grueling climb reached more than eighty feet straight up. Freiki found it much more difficult than usual, with his wounds cooling and jabbing him with pain. He might have made better time had he changed to human form, but he despised humans and regretted that he had ever been one. They were small, weak of scent and sight and muscle. They were contemptible. And when you were human, pain mattered so much more.

Humans! They were worth nothing. Unless Changed.

Back at the beginning of winter, the Dream-Speaker had put the great idea into his head. The boy—the shapeless, dark Dream-Speaker called him "the Pentacle" for some reason—could be the first of a new and larger Pack. Bite him, let him Change, loose him among the humans in the town. More would be turned. And Freiki's Pack would grow, and his power would grow with the Pack. Make the werewolves so numerous and strong that all the people of the Valley would join them, or flee—or die.

And he had planned a strategy and had come so close—Ulva, the only girl-cub in the Pack now, and lonely because her father, Ulhu, was dead (he had been the Pack Leader, the one whom Freiki had challenged and killed) and her mother—well, she did not know, nor did anyone, even Freiki. Ulva's mother had been cast out of the Pack. She had vanished, and no one in their rounds of hunting had caught scent of her in many years, five rounds of seasons at least.

Ulva, with no family, lived on the fringes of the Pack, scavenging for what food she could find. Others told him that sometimes they had seen her in human form, sitting in a thicket, clutching her drawn-up knees and weeping. Weak. She would always be weak! But even the weak could be of use.

Freiki had induced Ulva to observe the boy. He knew the Pentacle, for the Dream-Speaker had given Freiki a vision of him, and Freiki had taken Ulva into the human settlement—though they kept concealed, and only frantic dogs knew something uncanny was hiding in the brush. Twice they had seen him, and Ulva had caught his scent. She twice had stalked him by night, always in wolf form and always spying on him from the fringes of the forest.

She had sensed his loneliness, the fracturing weakness that would allow Freiki to pry his soul apart. But—

She would not bite him! She refused Freiki's direct order!

Thinking of her insolence, he paused at a spot two-thirds of the way up, a place where he could brace his legs and be secure. He paused not to rest but to snarl with anger. Ulva had refused his order to bite the boy!

In fact, Freiki suspected, she had been on the verge of warning the Pentacle on that occasion during the Snow Moon's brightness, when neither she nor he could have changed completely into human form. There was no defying the Full Moon's power. She was a harsh mistress.

He had learned that she had appointed a meeting with the Pentacle. He had followed, bringing the Pack, and the frightened girl noticed them only at the last moment. She had tried to warn the boy! And so that evening _he_ , not Ulva, had transformed, morphing into full four-legged wolf form, and had delivered the bite.

It had worked. The boy had Changed at least once. She had met him in werewolf form and confirmed that much.

And then—the boy had not returned to the woods. Yet Freiki had caught his scent more than once, especially near the house whose sign he could still read—as a human, he had gained some education, and it had not all deserted him. The sign said, "MYSTERY HACK."

He had urged Ulva to lure the boy from there into the woods. It would be a way of redeeming herself, showing what she truly was. If the Pack could seize and hold the boy captive, he would be theirs fully and permanently very soon now—with the next full moon. Not far away.

And now—Ulva had fled. Cunningly, using tricks she had learned while hunting, she concealed her passage and vanished from the forest. Gone, gone, gone, like her mother before her. Wounded though he was, Freiki had tried for a time to trace her before losing the scent and giving up.

No matter. Ulva could be found. She _would_ be found. And Freiki would find the boy, too, and he would dominate him and through the boy he would unleash such horror in the little town—

He growled, deep in his throat. Someone loomed up at the top of the climb, someone who smelled of blood. One of the Pack. Which other had been wounded in the melee? He had not noticed. In his pain and weakness, he could not place the scent.

"Help me!" he snarled.

The figure reached down a clawed hand, clasped his own, hauled him up.

"Have they found Ulva?" Freiki demanded, his chest heaving painfully after his climb.

"You failed me." The voice was not the voice of anyone he recognized—wait. It was very like the eerie whisper of the Dream Speaker.

Red rage flashed in Freiki's mind. "What? I am the Pack Leader!"

"I am not a member of your Pack."

His vision, blurred by the pounding of his pulse and the ebb and flow of dark spots, cleared just enough. The moon had risen again, a waning moon peering through breaks in clouds, but in its light a werewolf's eyes could see almost as well as at noon. "You're dead!" Freiki roared.

Ondawa, the woman-werewolf he had recently slaughtered, stood before him—but her throat was an open gash, slimed with her own blood. "The body is dead," the thing said, and he realized it had not spoken. He had somehow heard _thoughts_ , not words.

Freiki, determined to kill Ondawa again, lunged forward.

Whether Freiki's killer—at this point, anyway—could even still be called a werewolf is disputable. However, the form sufficed. With strength far greater than Ondawa had ever possessed, it methodically ripped Freiki to pieces, ignoring his bites and his blows and the stab of his claws.

One arm torn free. The guts spilled. The genitals ripped off. Then the head. The attacking figure tore it away from the torso and threw it to the ground, stamping on until no one could have told what the bloody mass had once been. And then the animating spirit left what had been Ondawa, and that dead body folded and collapsed and toppled over the edge of the precipice.

The battle had been loud. Some of the Pack must have heard, must even have seen what happened, even if no one could understand—for Freiki had never mentioned the Dream-Speaker to any of the others, and none of them had ever heard the voice in the night. All they knew was that they had lost two of their number: Ondawa, the most loyal servant of Freiki, and Freiki himself.

The Pack lacked a leader.

The night grew dismal with howls.


	9. Chapter 9

**Curse of the Wolf Boy**

 **9: Between Friends**

* * *

 **(Friday, May 8, 2015)**

The call late that afternoon surprised Mabel. She didn't recognize the number, but when she answered, she heard a familiar (though a little deeper) voice say, "Hey, Mabel! Long time no see! Shall we face-time?"

"Li'l Gideon?" Mabel asked, astonished.

"Well, yeah, but it's just 'Gideon' these days. Is it OK to switch to face-time?"

"Uh—yeah, I suppose." Mabel activated her phone camera and Gideon must have done the same, because his image popped up on her phone. "Hey, I like your new do!" she said, blinking at his hair, now pulled back in a ponytail.

His cheeks, no longer quite so chubby, puffed as he grinned. "Why, thank you. And may I say your smile is even more charming without the braces! Though I know you're quite the connoisseur of the sparkly side of life!"

Mabel grinned. Same old Gideon, same old BS, except now she recognized it for what it was. "Thanks," she said. "How are you?"

"Well, in considerable pain," he said, crinkling his eyes. "I don't know how much you might've heard about the whole thing, but recently out in the woods, I got bit by some supernatural critter, believed to be a werewolf? Your great-uncle Stanford concocted a serum to correct that—I guess we'll know how good it worked when the moon's full again. Anyway, when I got the injection it was awful agony, but I thought about how brave you and your brother were back in Never Mind All That, and I just gritted my little old teeth and took it like a man."

"I'm sure it'll work," Mabel said. "Grunkle Ford knows what he's doing."

"Well—I wanted to call and say first that I was thinkin' of you, just in case this is my last month on Earth with a human mind, you know. Plus, I've had to miss some school and we have final exams coming up next week."

"Huh," Mabel said. "Ours aren't for two more weeks."

"Yeah, we didn't miss but one snow day up here. So, I was wonderin' if, you know, just for old time's sake you could do me a big old favor?"

"What is it?" Mabel asked. With Gideon, you always had to ask first.

"Well, I need to review for my Social Studies exam, and I need somebody to quiz me. Daddy's busy, and Mama is off visitin' her niece in Idaho—she's havin' a baby, her niece is, I mean—and I'd ask a friend, but—well, I don't have all that many friends in my class, you know? So, if I could email you a list of fifty questions and you could quiz me, I'd appreciate it a right smart. I know it's a big favor to ask."

"No, that's OK," Mabel said. "Go ahead and email me and I'll print the questions out and call you back. Need my email address?"

"Why, thank you so much! Wendy told it to me. She would've helped herself, but she's awful busy right now. Oh, please let me say that I'm lookin' forward to seein' you again come June. If I survive as a human, I mean."

"Yeah . . . that's . . . great," Mabel told him. "Go on and email the questions and give me a few minutes to print them up and call you back."

The three pages came through, and using the home WiFi set-up, Mabel connected her phone to the printer down in her dad's office, and she printed them out. She gathered them, glanced through, and satisfied herself that it was just an ordinary eighth-grade review sheet.

She went back upstairs, got comfortable in her room and returned Gideon's call. He answered right away. "Did it transmit all right?" he asked.

"It's fine. Fifty questions in all, right? You ready to start?"

"Ready as I'll ever be," Gideon said. "Wait a minute." He slowly rotated his phone, the view showing his room. He seemed to be sitting at a desk. The camera made the whole 360-degree turn and then Gideon's face appeared again. "Just so's you can see I'm not cheating with prompt cards or a computer or anything. OK, Mabel, drill me."

"First," Mabel said, reading from the review sheet, "who was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence?"

"That would be Mr. Thomas Jefferson of Virginia," Gideon said. "He had some help from Mr. John Adams and Mr. Benjamin Franklin, who suggested some changes that he made, but he was the primary one."

"Correct," Mabel said. "What was the first national government of the United States called, and what are the dates of its existence?"

"OK, the first real national government was under the Articles of Confederation," Gideon said. "It was different from our modern one. The Articles created an association of the states, and each state was kind of like its own independent country. The central government was weak and didn't have much power. I mean, the states made most of the laws and all. There was a Congress that could make war, and issue money, and run the post office. That government started in 1781 when they ratified the Articles, and it didn't work out so good, so in 1786 the Congress called a new Constitutional Convention, and the Constitution got wrote up and adopted in 1787, and that's when the first national government ended and the modern one started."

"That's more than I needed to know," Mabel said. "But from what I remember of eighth grade, you're right. Next . . .."

Gideon rarely fumbled or went too far off the mark, though he did have trouble with about twelve of the questions. Mabel cheerfully identified the numbers and told him he ought to review them, and he said he would. After an hour of questions and answers and advice, Gideon said, "Thank you, Mabel, and I mean that in friendship. I still like you a lot. Not in a romantical way, you understand, but as a friend."

"Same here, Gideon," Mabel said cheerfully. "Good luck with your exam, and I'll see you in June!"

"Bye-bye, now."

 _Huh,_ Mabel thought. _What a strange conversation._ She still had no "romantical" feelings for Gideon, but he had grown to be more tolerable. And she had to admit he was rocking his new hairstyle. _Maybe when I get up there I can find some nice girl his age and do my matchmaking magic!_ Surely in the weird world of Gravity Falls she could find some girl who somehow deserved Gideon as a boyfriend.

Feeling just a little bit guilty—for no good reason—Mabel called Teek to chat, just to even things out, and they had a nice long conversation, too. She didn't mention the werewolf biz to him. No need in stirring up strangeness in Gravity Falls. It would come along on its own hook.

Meanwhile, Dipper was also face-timing someone in Gravity Falls. "Did it hurt?" he asked Wendy, really concerned.

"Nah, not bad. Not as much as Gideon acted like it did," Wendy said, chuckling. "Just a little needle stick. And no itchiness or puffiness after, so Ford says the serum is working with no complications for both of us. 'Course, I probably didn't even need it, just got scratched, not bit."

"How is the girl? Ulva, is that her name?"

"Yeah. She's . . . real different. She started out human, she says, but got bit by her own mother when she was just a real little kid—she doesn't even remember it, the others told her about it. Both her folks were werewolves, so she could do a full change, you know, not be like a Lon Chaney, Jr., hairy guy, but a real four-legged wolf. She can just change back and forth whenever she wants, 'cept it's nearly impossible when the full moon is shining. But now she wants to learn to be a human."

"She's got a good teacher," Dipper said.

"Me? Well, I think Melody'll do better at the teaching. We bought Ulva some clothes and she's getting used to wearing them. Soos is a little nervous. He keeps telling her 'Now, remember, dawg, don't bite our babies.' I think the 'dawg' bothers her a little bit. But she's learning how to eat and drink like a person and all, and so far she's been real gentle with Melody and the little ones. She's already asleep tonight, down in the guest room. You ought to see the way she curls up when she sleeps. I got her to wear a nightgown, but she insists on laying on that area rug on the floor, seems to think that the bed's not as comfortable. And I noticed that before she lays down, she turns around three times, just like a puppy."

"What's going to happen to her?"

"Dunno, man. Ulva thinks her mother is still alive, but no idea where she might be. Could be a job for the Mystery Twins, tracking down a missing werewolf lady!"

"Maybe," Dipper said. He tried to hide his nervousness and said briskly, "Now, this boss werewolf guy, Freiki. Is Grunkle Ford sure you're safe from him?"

"Pretty sure," Wendy said. "Dr. P. came out and did a protective charm on the Shack and its grounds. Oh, hey, forgot to tell you, but as of next week, I'll be back home. Dad's been walking without his cane for a while now, and the doc's cleared him for all activities, so Junior's takin' off for Steve's lumber camp up in Washington this coming weekend. Then I've got to spend, like, two or three days, minimum, cleaning out my room. Danny's a horrible slob, worse'n Gus or Marcus or even Dad, and he's trashed the place. I swear, the floor's like knee-deep in garbage!"

"Can you swing that with school and the Shack and all?"

"Yeah, I'll manage. My night classes are over until September, and I'll be done with my high-school finals on Thursday. Guess I'll go to graduation at the end of the month, just so see Tambry an' Robbie walk across the stage. I'll get to do it myself next year! I want you here for that, dude!"

"I'll make it somehow," Dipper promised. "Are you going to finish your senior-year classes in December?"

"Thinkin' about it. I really have just one term's worth of classes left, but I might take it easy. Since there's no graduation until spring, I may just do one of my remaining credits in fall and one in spring—for one thing, Gravity Falls High is small, and they don't teach those two classes except one time a year each, and one's spring, one's fall. Only way to do them both at the same time is independent study for one of 'em, and I'd rather be in a class."

"Do it however it feels best," Dipper advised.

"Yeah, it's all up to me!" Wendy replied, smiling. "Man, I didn't know they took it so easy on seniors! We pretty much write our own ticket. Sweet!"

"Well, I'll be a junior next year," Dipper said. "With senior year under your belt, you can coach me." He hesitated and then slowly began, "Wendy—I don't mean to nag, but when you move back to your house—I mean, it _is_ isolated and all—so, you know, you're going to have to take extra care—"

"Way ahead of you, dude. While Dad's over at your great-uncles' building sites on Monday, Ford's gonna go werewolf-proof Casa Catastrophe, too. Not gonna tell Dad that he's doing it, 'cause that would just make him fret. But we're taking no chances." She bit her lip, looking undecided, and then said, "OK, I promised Ford I wouldn't spread this around, but he can't stop me from tellin' you. There's something big behind the werewolf stuff."

"Huh?" Dipper asked. His weirdness sense tingled. "You mean—a conspiracy?"

"Yeah, I guess, something like that. That whole Dreamsnake episode, you remember? Something like that happened to Freiki, too."

"He saw supernatural snakes?"

"Not exactly," said Wendy. "Ulva told us about it. What happened, last year about the same time that the T'klatlumodh showed up at my place, Freiki started having dreams that some demon or something was talking to him in the nights. The Dream-Talker or Dream-Speaker of something, she can't remember exactly. That was what told Freiki to send Ulva to lure Gideon in."

"What would anybody want with Gideon?" Dipper asked. "I mean, he hasn't been a threat since Weirdmageddon. Just a pain in the butt!"

Wendy laughed. "Yeah, he still comes on too strong. But as the Dancing Teen Wolf-Boy, he's a hit. Popular with the tourists. You know how smart-mouthed he is, and how good at flattering the customers. And, dude, I gotta say, he's popular with the teen girls who visit, too. Not so much with the girls in school, though."

"I'm not surprised," Dipper said. "He's so self-centered."

"Yeah, I think the ones who're around him a lot see that pretty quick. Anyways, I was saying, Freiki had Ulva meet him like by accident and got her to lure him to Circle Park and all. Funny, though—she didn't know his name until he talked to her. Freiki called him what he said the Dream-Talker voice called him."

"What was that?" Dipper asked.

"The Pentacle," Wendy told him. She paused, and in a lower tone asked, "Remember the wheel?"

"The Zodiac," Dipper said. "Yeah. You were Ice, Mabel was Shooting Star, I was Pine Tree, Grunkle Ford was the six-fingered hand, Grunkle Stan was the fez symbol, Soos was the question mark, McGucket the glasses, Pacifica the llama, Robbie the broken heart, and Gideon—the pentacle, the five-pointed star." He shivered. "But the Zodiac was tied to Bill Cipher."

"Yeah," Wendy said. "Heads up, though—Ford says that the wheel and the people it symbolizes might not have seen the end of it all yet."

Dipper bit his lip and then quietly asked, "He still thinks Bill might be involved?"

"I don't know," Wendy said. "I don't think he rules it out, though. Hey, man, I didn't mean to upset you!"

"No," Dipper said, "I'm not upset."

And he wasn't.

But he _was_ worried.

And, to tell the truth, he was a little scared.


	10. Chapter 10

**Curse of the Wolf Boy**

 **10: Forebodings**

* * *

 **(Saturday night, May 9, 2015)**

He woke up in the hospital. He knew immediately where he was, but not why. Night painted the one window black. He heard the soft groans and labored breathing of another person. A ward, then, or a semi-private room. The dim glow of the hospital-bed light let him find the nurse's call button, which he pressed.

Half an hour crawled by like an injured tortoise. Then a woman came in. "What do you need?" she asked, all business.

"Where am I?" he asked her, gathering strength within himself for what he had to do.

"West Nevada Regional Care," the nurse said.

"North of Reno?"

"Yes. You came in before daylight yesterday. You were in bad shape."

"Blood loss," he said.

"The police want to talk to you," she said.

"It wasn't a suicide attempt," he told her. "It was an accident."

"I'll give you something to help you sleep."

He did not want to sleep. He pieced together what must have happened. He remembered being furious with Freiki, his chosen instrument, who failed him and then clumsily killed one of the Pack—something he knew the others would not tolerate. And now, alerted, spooked, they would not be easy prey. He shouldn't have done it, not so soon after dealing with Debbinzer, but he shed more of his own blood to reanimate the female werewolf. He needed the body so he could punish Freiki.

He could recall withdrawing his consciousness from her body, but not waking. He must have been too weak. And the motel maid would have discovered him unconscious and bloody. The management would have called the police, and the police would have sent him here. Soon they would be checking on his credentials as a priest, which would not stand up for close scrutiny.

He felt weak. He stretched out his senses. The old man in the next bed was terribly weak, too.

But he had some life force left in him.

The false priest concentrated and began to drain it. The groans grew louder. The false priest felt a tiny bit stronger.

The nurse came back with a hypodermic. Before she could use it, he said, "I think that man is dying."

She put the needle on a tray and went to the other bed. "Mr. Fletcher? Mr. Fletcher, can you hear me?"

He began to absorb her life force instead. She turned, groped, and sank to her knees and then fell unconscious to the floor.

He was strong enough by then to pull out the IV stylet and catheter. He found tape and a cotton gauze pad on the bedside stand and applied a bandage and strip over the puncture in his left arm. He got out of bed and opened the cheap pressboard wardrobe. His clothes hung inside, and his backpack rested on the floor. He took them, checked the wallet. No money, which was what he had expected. The motel people, or the police, would have relieved him of the thousand-odd dollars or so he had carried.

The lining in his windbreaker had not been cut, though. He pulled a pocket inside-out, ripped the seam, and reached through it into the lining. He grabbed a handful of bills—two hundreds, three fifties, three twenties. There was more in the jacket, but he could retrieve that later. He got dressed, stepped into the corridor, and found the nurses' station unoccupied. He went behind the counter and opened random locker doors until he found a white lab jacket, which he put on, though he did not button it. And a stethoscope, which he hung around his neck. He picked up a clipboard from the desk. He stored jacket and backpack in a capacious, tough plastic bag meant for hospital waste.

So disguised, he explored. Twice he saw nurses or aides down a hallway and quickly stepped into a room until the coast was clear again. Finally, on the ground floor, he found a side entrance at the foot of a stair. A sign on the glass door said KEEP THIS DOOR CLOSED 8PM-8AM.

He opened it anyway and quickly left the hospital, expecting that he had set off an alarm and that security cameras had his image on them. Speed was important, and he walked fast. He ditched the lab jacket, stethoscope, and clipboard in a trash bin in the back corner of the parking lot.

Traffic whizzed by on a major highway not far away. He could see the lights of cars twinkling through the scrub. In the other direction he saw a lighted sign. He walked toward that, away from the highway, for maybe a quarter of a mile before he recognized it as an eating place, a Musical Chairs, basically a 24-hour burger joint.

He badly needed food and drink. A few cars stood in the lot, and a big-rig truck had angled in at the rear and stood in what was probably a slot for buses. He went inside and ordered two burgers with everything, coffee, and a liter bottle of water. He paid and looked around. Six or eight people in the place, in twos and threes. Only one guy on his own, wearing a long-billed baseball cap. He sat at the next table and immediately took all the sugar packets from the cup and dropped them into his windbreaker pocket, on the side away from the other man.

He sat and took the lid off his plastic-foam coffee cup, then pretended to look in the little porcelain sugar cup—now empty, of course. "Buddy," he said to the guy in the cap, "you got some sugar on your table?"

"Sure," the guy said, looking around. He had a Hispanic accent, not strong.

" _Gracias,"_ he said, standing, reaching, and taking two packets of sugar.

" _De nada."_ The guy in the cap looked at him and then asked, "You Mexican?"

"No, lived in Argentina a long time, though." In Spanish, he asked, "Is the semi in the lot yours?"

In the same language, the other guy replied, with a shrug, "I drive it, don't own it."

"Which way you heading, friend?"

"East. Salt Lake City."

The false priest took out a hundred-dollar bill and held it between two fingers. "I'm heading that way, if I can get a ride. Got a job promised in Ogden, but my damn car broke down, cost a couple thousand to fix. Worth this much to me if I can get there by tomorrow."

"You could ride with me as far as Salt Lake," the trucker said. "I been without a job before, too, man. I know it gets hard. I'll give you a lift. It isn't legal, but—" he shook his right hand, as though flicking water from his fingers. It was a dismissive gesture, saying in effect, _I don't care about the legality._

"Thank you," the false priest said again, with a warm smile. "My name is Tácito."

The trucker laughed. "I am Luis," he said in English, smiling. "Name like that, you must be a good listener."

The false priest smiled even more broadly. _Tácito_ means "the silent one." He said, "If you like to talk, I like to listen."

Luis took the hundred-dollar bill from him. "Eat your food," he said. "I need to leave in ten minutes."

"I'll be ready," the false priest said. He wolfed the two hamburgers, drank the coffee, into which he'd emptied six sugar packets, and drank half the water. In eight minutes the two men walked out of the restaurant.

Twenty minutes after the semi pulled out, the police siren wailed its way to the hospital, just a little too late.

* * *

Gideon Gleeful complained of muscle aches and a headache that day, but he had no fever. Stanford Pines consulted with the family, talked to Gideon, and actually persuaded him to let him stick his finger and examine a drop of his blood—though Gideon did demand a bandage and then said he needed ice cream to ease the pain. In his lab, Stanford ran the drop through an analyzer.

He smiled as the readings printed out: the alien—that is to say, lycan—proteins in Gideon's blood were diminishing. The computer predicted they would be eliminated within two weeks. The next appearance of the full moon should not, Ford decided, turn Gideon into anything more unusual than his normal self.

Late that afternoon, Wendy stopped by the lab and donated a little blood. The test showed no trace of lycan proteins, reinforcing Ford's impression that she had not been infected when Freiki attacked her.

"No headaches, joint pains, muscle pains?" he asked her. She sat backwards in a straight chair, he in his computer-desk swivel chair.

"Does the butt count as a joint?" she asked with a grin. "'Cause I've been workin' on my room—Junior's left it in the worst mess you can imagine—and that's a great big pain in mine. Otherwise, no."

"I think," Stanford said, "as long as we can keep the pack away from you and Gideon, we're in the clear."

"And from Ulva, too," Wendy said. "By the way, she wants to see Gideon. Is that OK?"

Ford looked dubious. "I don't know how far we can trust a lycan," he said. "My dealings with them have been limited."

"I think you can trust this one," Wendy said. "She got kicked out of the pack. And she's trying hard to be a regular human."

"I'm not sure that's even possible," Ford said heavily. "When the moon is full—well, she'll transform. It's not something she can resist, though once the initial change is over, she just might be able to take and, with terrific effort, hold a human shape for the rest of the night. But—well, I'll talk to Gideon and see what he says. How is she adjusting?"

"She's like a little girl, I dunno, maybe six, seven years old? Except she's in, like, a thirteen-year-old body. I think she's spent most of the last few years as a wolf. Sometimes her language is funny, like she doesn't quite know what the words mean. And she's . . . it's hard to put in words. So eager to please, I guess? Little Soos loves her like crazy, and Abuelita's even warmed up to her. And when I'm around, she follows me everywhere."

"Like a puppy," Ford suggested.

Wendy blinked. "Yeah, I guess so."

"Are your father and brothers away tonight?" Ford asked.

"Yep. Now that Dad's off his crutches, he's catchin' up on his bowling. They've gone off to Roseburg. Won't get home until midnight or later."

"Are you staying in your own room now?"

She laughed. "Not hardly! I've got to haul more garbage and then give it a real cleaning. All but sterilize it, I mean. No, I'm gonna sleep up in Dipper's room again tonight, go over tomorrow morning and roust the guys out of bed for church."

Ford had been toying with a large coin. He tossed it to her. "Catch."

She did a slap-catch, and her hand closed on it.

"Know what that is?" Ford asked.

Wendy looked at the coin on her palm and saw an eagle with outstretched wings clutching a branch with three leaves in one talon, a batch of arrows in the other. "Old-fashioned dollar," she said.

"An 1880 Morgan silver dollar," Ford said. "Does it feel warm?"

"No, kinda cool," Wendy said. "What's up, Dr. P?"

"It's 90% silver," Ford said. "By now, if you were having any symptoms of infection, it would burn you to touch it."

She chuckled. "I wear a piece of silver jewelry all the time," she said. "It hasn't burned me yet!"

"Oh." Ford glanced at her hands. No rings. "Earrings?"

"Nope," she said. "Dipper gave it to me, and I always wear it, and no, I won't tell you where." She laughed again. "You're turnin' pink, man! It's not someplace all _that_ weird, I'll tell you that much."

"Maybe," Ford said, "we'd better go upstairs. I'd like to talk to Ulva."

* * *

He did, and they had their chat. Ford noted her . . . unusual behavior. Not alarming, just a little off-track. For example, when you talked to her, she stared intently at you, her eyes never wavering, never blinking. When a sound attracted her attention, her head instantly swiveled toward the source, and her whole being seemed focused on it—an alertness you'd expect in a wolf, but not a human. And—she sniffed. Not constantly, not as though she had sinus trouble, but her nose tested the air repeatedly. And when she encountered something unusual, she smelled it.

She could only briefly touch the silver dollar held on Ford's palm. "Burns," she murmured.

He asked her, "What do you remember of your parents?"

Staring at him with her brown eyes, she said, "Father . . . died. Not remember any much. Mother . . . loved me. Visited me one, two, three times after left. When out on hunt. Would from nowhere be at my side. But one night the Pack went hunting for her. They do not find, but I see her no more after that time."

Ford questioned her gently. Then he asked, "Do you wish to talk to Gideon, the boy you were sent to bite?"

"Yes please," she said, but it was almost a whimper.

"Will you come with me to him?"

Shyly, she asked Wendy, "I look all girl?"

"You do," Wendy said. Ulva's hair, when washed and trimmed and brushed, was a striking shade of light auburn, intriguingly silver-gray streaked, and her eyes were a peculiar shade of brown, nearly golden in a good light. She wore clothes she felt most comfortable in: a loose gray knitted top, soft jeans, and sandals. She had a very hard time with regular shoes.

"Will you go?" she asked Wendy.

Wendy glanced at Ford, who nodded. "Sure," she said.

They ran into a problem. Ulva shrank back from Ford's car. "Can't," she whimpered.

"Too much metal, Dr. P," Wendy suggested. "Hey, why not bring Gideon here instead? The Shack's protected."

"I'll be back in twenty minutes," Ford promised.

Ulva and Wendy waited on the back porch, sitting on the battered old sofa. "Sorry," Ulva said.

"For not wantin' to ride in a car? It's all right," Wendy said. "Everybody's afraid of something."

Ulva leaned against Wendy, and Wendy had to resist an urge to pat her head. She was so much like a gangly puppy.

They heard the car return, and in the twilight, Gideon and Ford came around the house. Gideon was wearing jeans and a black tee. He had also, Wendy noticed, tied his ponytail back with a black ribbon. He looked sort of piratey.

"Hey," he said as he came up onto the porch. "Good to see you again. You're lookin' nice."

Wendy got up, so he could sit beside Ulva. He did, not touching her, and she . . . sniffed his shoulder. "Sorry," she said. Her voice sounded heartbroken, but she didn't cry. Wendy suspected that she was on the verge of a mournful howl, though.

"Hey, now, it wasn't your fault," Gideon said. "That old Freiki was the one bit me."

"He sent me," Ulva said. "Bring the boy. I was to bite you. To change and then bite you. But—I could not. You were nice to me. You not want to be in the Pack."

"Naw," Gideon said. "But I like you, too. You were so sweet, and you seemed so lost and all alone." He looked away. "I kinda know what it is to want to belong."

"Come on, man," Wendy said, taking Ford's elbow. "Let's go for a little walk."

"Young people," Ford said to Gideon and Ulva, "Don't leave the porch. It doesn't affect Ulva in human form, but there's a strong protective barrier around the house. Do you understand?"

"Yeah, thanks," Gideon said.

"You're not gonna run off, are you?" Wendy asked Ulva.

Ulva stared at her with that steady, intent golden gaze. "I have no place I belong," she whispered. No. I will not leave."

Wendy and Ford strolled to the bonfire clearing. Ford looked around. "I captured my first flying eyeball here," he said. "Not long after your father finished building my house."

"Dip and I like to come here in the evenings," Wendy said. "It's nice and peaceful. So—you don't think I'm gonna go wolf girl next full moon?"

"Not at all," Ford said.

"That's good. 'Cuz if I did, I'd have to bite Dipper. Dr. Pines, you kinda know—but I'm like Ulva, I guess. Dipper's mine. I can't be separated from him. I'd be just as lost as she is without her Pack."

"You two have plans," Ford said, sitting on the log.

She sat near him. "We're workin' on them. But, man, Dipper's a lot more mature than even you know. I'm gonna tell you, 'cuz everybody seems worried about it, but—there's nothing to worry _about_ , OK? Me and Dip, we're not all that physical yet, if you know what I mean. One day. But not until we both are sure we're ready for it." She sighed. "I looked up the full moon online. In June, it's gonna come on June second—that's the day after Dipper and Mabel are arriving. And about two weeks after that is Tambry and Robbie's wedding day. I'm Maid of Honor, you know. And Mabel's a bridesmaid. Wouldn't feel right about doing that if I'd spent a couple days runnin' around in the woods, howling at the moon!"

"It won't happen," Ford said. "You'd have shown signs by now. By the way, Gideon passed the dollar test—he could hold onto the Morgan dollar with no discomfort. Only—" Ford patted all his pockets—"come to think of it, I don't think he returned the coin!"

* * *

"Honey," said Glory Bee—well, that's what she'd called herself for the past two years, ever since she'd come to Vegas, her real name was Gloria Beedlebin—"honey, you're lucky tonight!"

The pale man smiled as she massaged his shoulders. And he reached out his own long-fingered hands to gather in the chips. Across the table, a portly man in a white shirt, his red tie loosened and dangling, sweat darkening the armpits, reached for his pearl-gray suit jacket. "I've had enough," he said in a resentful tone. He stood up, struggling to pull the jacket on. "You're one lucky son of a—pardon, Ma'am." He was from Texas.

"Are we all finished?" the pale man asked, glancing around at the other three players.

"Reckon not," said the lean Oklahoman, who dressed like a cowpoke but who was a big deal in consumer electronics. "Mr. Friel, your luck is plain bound to turn. My deal." He collected and shuffled the cards. "Five-card stud, nothin' wild. Ante up, gentlemen."

The Texan left the hotel room. Friel said, "The gentlemen's glasses are empty, Glory. See what they'll have."

"Bourbon and branch water," the Oklahoman said.

Mr. Franklyn, short and dark and with a poker face so blank it looked as if it belonged to a stroke victim, said, "Club soda, ice," in a voice that only hinted of the Bronx. The third man, a Californian who was a perennial assistant producer for a movie outfit, said, "Beer's good for me."

It is not generally known, but in Las Vegas the most constant high-stakes games of chance do not take place on casino floors. Gamblers organize private parties, like this one—the California guy was hosting, in his suite. They had just wrapped up production on a heist film set in Vegas, and they'd ended five days ahead of the shooting schedule, and he was busily losing his wrap bonus.

Friel was ahead by a hundred thousand dollars—all in cash. That's the nature of private games. The others had lost, in combination, as much as he had won. They acted disgruntled. Somehow this peculiar Adam Friel guy—he wouldn't talk about his past or where he came from, leading some to think he might be mobbed up—had an uncanny card sense. Though he lost trifling sums from time to time, he always, always seemed to come through with winning cards when the stakes were high.

This deal, for example. The dealer did the rounds, the first bets were placed, the players asked for one or two more cards—all but Friel, who said, "I'll play these." He'd hardly seemed to glance at them.

"You don't have a pat hand," Franklyn said.

Friel shrugged.

"I think you're bluffing," Mr. Czorny, the Oklahoman said. "I raise two thousand."

Friel matched his bet. Jarrod, the dealer, raised three thousand. Franklyn, in for seven thousand already, folded. Czorny saw Jarrod's three thousand. Friel raised one hundred dollars.

"You gotta be kiddin' me," Jarrod said, and raised another five thousand.

So it went, until finally the call. "What you got?" Jarrod asked, laying down his cards. "Full house here." Two Jacks and three nines.

"Shoot!" Czorny griped, throwing in three tens and two unmatched cards.

"Flush in spades," Friel said, laying down a three of diamonds. "Queen of spades," he said. He put on top of that a seven of clubs. "Jack." And so on, ten, nine, and eight of spades—except what he put down were the six of clubs, the nine of hearts, and the ace of spades. He'd had nothing.

But what the others saw—Czorny, Franklyn, and Jarrod—were the cards Friel had named, all spades: Queen, Jack, ten, nine, eight. They _saw_ them on the table. No question about it. And they were sure Friel hadn't cheated.

They cursed. Czorny got up to leave, and Franklyn, too. "I won't have enough left to get back home if I don't go now," he mumbled.

With that, the game broke up. Friel collected his winnings, without counting them—somewhere between a hundred and a hundred and forty thousand, all in hundreds, which made a stack between five and six inches thick. Friel divided them into two fairly equal bundles. He put one, with some squeezing, into his left front pocket, the other into a leather portfolio. "Thank you for the game," he said.

"I don't think we'll play again," Jarrod said grimly.

"No. Come, Gloria."

Jarrod grabbed Gloria's arm as she passed. "Did he cheat us?" he asked her.

"Let go of me."

Friel gazed at Jarrod. "You know I did not cheat."

"You didn't cheat," Jarrod said.

"Let her go."

Jarrod released his hold.

"Come, Gloria."

They walked out into the neon night of Vegas. Friel hailed a cab. "The Trove," Friel told the driver, who took them to one of the outlying hotels, not quite on the Strip.

In their room, Glory kissed Friel. "You're such a good poker player."

"I'll do," he told her.

"How are you feeling, honey?" she asked. "You look so tired. And look, your nose has bled a little."

He went into the bathroom and washed the trace of blood off with cold water. "It's nothing."

"Are you sick, honey?" Glory asked. She had kicked off her shoes and sat on the foot of the king-sized bed.

"I have been ill. I need to gather my strength, that's all."

"Eat better, that kind of thing?" she asked.

He took off his jacket and took the bundles of money from his pocket and from the leather portfolio. Her eyes followed the stacks of bills as he took them to the safe in the small closet. She wished she knew the combination, but he was careful to hide the keypad whenever he opened the safe.

"So," she said, "better diet, work out some, build yourself up? I can help with that. I had dietician training."

"No, that won't help me grow stronger," he said. He smiled at her. "I think I may have to perform a blood sacrifice."

She laughed. "Beneath the light of a baleful moon?" she asked.

"The moon does not matter. I merely need a victim."

She beckoned him, grinning lewdly. "Well, hon, I'd volunteer, but, you know, I guess you need a virgin."

"Not necessarily." He walked toward her.

* * *

 _The End_

 _(but summer is coming soon….)_


End file.
